


fortune and glory

by ifonly13



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 26,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2558345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifonly13/pseuds/ifonly13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate Beckett works alone. But her latest mission forces her to face the reason she went into her line of work and to deal with the man who has challenged her patience from the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She steadies her breathing, pressing herself back against the wall. The footsteps approaching from the left are fast and heavy, accompanied by frantic shouting. She only catches a few words in the jumble but she knows that they’ve got no idea where she is. Still, as they run past, she holds her breath, watching the four of them barrel toward her distraction.

The echo of their boots fades and she slips out from the shadowed hall. Her shoes don’t make a sound on the marble floor as she dashes down the galley, hugging the walls in case one of the men return for a more thorough search of the hidden areas.

The showroom isn’t large compared to the rest of the place. Just five cases, glass bottoms and open tops that let the recessed lights in the ceiling send rainbows onto the walls. Her fingers twitch against her thigh, short nails scratching at the soft black fabric. It’d be so easy to take one of the emerald bracelets and those opal earrings with all of them just sitting out there in the open.

No. Just the necklace. The museum just wants their necklace back.

It’s the furthest case from the door and the gems sparkle at her as she slides her fingers under the thick silver chain, lifting the necklace out of the case. She pauses, just for a moment, waiting for the alarm to sound. No click or blaring siren. No lowering of steel doors, trapping her inside. Either the guy feels secure in his fortress of a house or his security system is much better than her intel told her.

Just in case there’s a silent alarm, she quickly tucks the necklace into the velvet pouch in her bag, and turns to leave.

She retraces her steps back down the hall, running through the blueprint of the building in her mind. It should be the third door on her left that leads to the courtyard. She hears a pair of solo footsteps coming back toward her and the adrenaline makes her fumble with the knob before sliding in through the crack between the frame.

It’s a close call, her hand shaking on the doorknob as she listens to the person run past. Once she is certain the snick of the metal won’t alert anyone, she releases the knob and sprints off across the open-air courtyard. She wedges the toe of her boot into one of the cracks in the stone wall, lifting herself up and over.

Tucked back into the shadows, she checks her watch. She has about an hour to grab her bags and get to the airport.

* * *

The sheets are cool against her body as she stretches her legs out, pushing one of the pillows off the bed as she flexes her arms over her head.

She’s been home for a day. No more hotels across Europe or leaving in the middle of the night to get to the next location. No, she’s under her own blankets now. She has a week off for vacation before she needs to worry about being sent out on another mission.

She plans on using every hour of this week to relax. To stay in her pajamas and read. Maybe she’ll get dinner with her friends one night but the rest of it is reserved for herself.

Kate scrapes a hand over her hair, tangled and still slightly damp strands catching at her ears as she rolls to face the window. Sunlight peeks through the lightweight curtains, only slightly deflected by the building next to hers. Not nearly dark enough to go back to sleep. She really should have invested in those blackout curtains when she moved out of the tiny sublet into this place.

She shivers when her feet hit the hardwood, snagging the throw blanket from the chest at the foot of her bed. Her jaw cracks as she yawns on the walk to the living room, coffee already brewed thanks to the timed machine, a gift from her father. Pulling the blanket around her shoulders, she pours some into a clean mug. The first sip makes her swear, swallowing hard as she yanks open the fridge to check the date on the carton for the cream. Kate tosses the liquid into the sink, watching the pale brown stain the basin for a moment before pouring more coffee, keeping it black and bitter. With the cup cradled close to her chest, she goes up the stairs to the terrace.

The chill of the morning breeze nips at her when she sits in the wrought iron chair, propping her feet up on the low stone wall. Kate balances the coffee mug on her knee as she relaxes into the chair, calling up the Times on her phone. There is a single mention of the return of the stolen jewels to the Irish History Museum but nothing about who delivered them to the curator. Good.

In the middle of an article on a politician who was hospitalized overnight for a blood clot, her phone vibrates.

“Beckett,” she answers.

“You’re back,” says Washington.

She curls her toes against the stone. “Can’t give me a day’s peace, can you?” she groans, taking a sip of her coffee. “What’s up?”

“Got something for you.” Before she can protest, the words already in her throat, he continues. “You’ll want this one. Hawaii.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“Vacation in Hawaii would be nice,” he suggests.

Kate shakes her head even though he can’t see the movement. “No. A job in Hawaii is not the same as vacation in Hawaii. I’m taking a break. A week, sir. I just want a week. Goodb-”

“Wait! Beckett, it’s part of the Charlotte Hotel theft.”

She pauses.

“Got you,” he chuckles. “Source says he might have a lead on some of the diamonds. In Hawaii. I figured you’d want to be in on it but if you’re on vacation...”

“Give me another day, okay? E-mail me the info and I’ll look for flights tomorrow night.”

She hangs up on him, putting the phone in her lap. Was a single week really too much to ask for? One week is all she wanted. A week to get back in touch with her own life, to settle down again before throwing herself back into work. But the Charlotte Hotel theft is different. That one’s personal.

That was her mom.

That was the one that killed her.

No. She’s on vacation.

Kate turns her phone off and puts it on the little table. Vacation. She can do this. She can sit on her terrace and drink her coffee and watch the sun rise against the neighboring building.

Except the breeze picks up, ruffling her unbrushed hair and tickling a chilly line over her collar so she gathers her things and moves back into the warmth of her apartment. The sun still seeps into the living room windows which means it’s flooding her bedroom too. Going back to sleep isn’t going to happen, especially not with even the hint of this case stuck in the back of her mind.

The clock on her microwave says it’s nearly six forty five. The coffee shop down the block doesn’t open for another fifteen minutes but that gives her time to get dressed. She can stop by the Duane-Reade and grab some food on the way back.

Dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose green top, she regards the still-dark phone on her dresser. She needs to turn it on and see if Lanie’s around for breakfast. She ignores the messages that pop up from Washington, scrolling through her contacts to her friend’s name.

“Hey, Lanie,” she says, switching the phone to speaker so that she can brush out her hair and talk at the same time.

“You back from Ireland?” her friend asks.

“Yeah.”

“Gonna tell me about it?”

“Nope,” Kate says, as she reaches back to braid her hair. “Can’t. You know that.”

Lanie sighs. “Worth a try. You at least find some hot Celtic guy to loosen you up?”

Kate ignores her friend. “Listen, I’m going to grab breakfast. Want to meet up?”

“Can’t. Already at work and just waiting on a double homicide to get to me. But how about dinner sometime?”

She flips back to the earpiece, cradling the phone in the curve of her shoulder. “Sounds good.” She hears the swish of the autopsy doors. “You’ve got to go. I’ll call later and we can figure out a day, okay?”

“Stay safe, Beckett,” Lanie warns before the phone goes silent.

When she looks down at the screen, there’s another message from Washington. She deletes it without reading past the first few words. She slides her feet into the flats, tucking her phone and wallet into the pocket of her light summer jacket before starting down the street for the coffee shop.

She buys a medium coffee and a slice of banana bread and starts back toward the apartment. It’s warm, the wind playing with the short strands of hair that escaped from her braid. She walks slowly, watching the toddlers playing on the little playground in the park near her building. It makes her wonder if her mother was ever the parent running after her child, making sure she didn’t fall on the monkey bars or if Johanna sat back and let her daughter make her own mistakes and learn from them.

“I need you on this. Today.”

She jumps. Some of her coffee sloshes out of the cut in the lid, burning her hand. “Shit, Washington,” she hisses, turning to face the man sitting on a bench under the shade of a tree. “Sir, I said I’d do it tomorrow. Give me the day.”

Washington gets on his feet and follows her as she circles the park. “I know. But there’s new information You need to be there now.”

“Respectfully, I really don’t. I want to be in my apartment. Goodbye, sir.”

“Beckett.” He says it just loud enough, with just enough steel behind it, that she pauses. “Castle’s going after the jewels too. He’s there now.”

She spins, her eyes narrowing. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”


	2. Chapter 2

She slams the door to her apartment behind her, tossing the empty coffee cup into the trash. Her head thumps back against the door. Sometimes she really hates Washington. Bastard knows exactly which cards to play to get her to do what he wants.

Kate drags a hand over her face. “Fucking Richard Castle,” she groans as she stalks toward the bedroom.

Her suitcase from Ireland isn’t unpacked, just sitting next to the closet. She grabs the handle and swings it up onto her bed. The jeans and thick sweaters that kept her warm in Ireland’s rain and fog aren’t going to work for Hawaii. She piles them on her comforter, searching through her drawers for the shorts and tanktops buried under her winter clothes.

Washington said he’d e-mail her the flight confirmation for that afternoon. He’d given her an hour to get packed, to let her dad know that she won’t be reachable, and to get to the airport.

With the suitcase half-packed, she speed-dials her dad. “Hey, Katie,” he answers on second ring, excitement coloring his voice. “Are we still on for lunch tomorrow?”

“Actually, I’m gonna have to cancel,” she says, letting the annoyance seep into her tone. She tosses another two pairs of shorts into the suitcase, turning back for a few t-shirts. “I need to go out of town for a while.”

“You just got back from Ireland,” he protests before she hears him telling his secretary to hold on a second.

She sighs, going into the bathroom for toothpaste and her toothbrush. “I know. But this one’s important, Dad. My editor requested me. But as soon as it’s wrapped up, I’ll be free for lunch whenever. Promise.”

“Where you going this time?”

“Hawaii,” she says, snagging her razor from the side of the tub. “I’ll text you when I land but then-”

“You’re off-grid.” She can practically hear his smile. “I know. My daughter had to become one of those intense cultural anthropologists... Love you, Kate.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

She hangs up, closing the toiletry bag and tucking it down against the inside of the suitcase with some warmer clothes in case it gets cooler. If she forgets anything, she can make a run to some thrift store down on the island.

The phone on the bed vibrates, alerting her to a new e-mail. Just the name of the airline, a time, and a flight number. She’d be pissed off at Washington for the heavy-handed way he’s manipulating this if she still wasn’t thinking about how to get Castle out of her way.

This case is hers.

She sends off a short text to Lanie in the cab on the way to the airport explaining that she’s not going to be reachable for a while.

And then, for the second time in less than forty-two hours, she gets on a plane.

 

* * *

 

She touches down in Hilo and the muggy air hits her immediately when she steps from the cool interior of the airport. Her jeans cling to her legs and she can already feel her sweat making her loose shirt stick to her chest as she opens the messages on her phone. Another short e-mail from Washington: the address of a hotel and the itinerary for the rest of the day, including what she assumes is a clean alias. She hails a cab and gives the driver the address, rolling the window down on the ride to let the sea air tangle her hair.

The hotel sits up on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, pots overflowing with flowers and ferns already making it a step up from her normal accommodations during missions. Wide, glass windows reflect the crashing whiteheads, the sea spray crusting the bottom of the panes with salt that shimmers in the sunlight. The man behind the counter types in her information as she watches seagulls ride the wind currents.

“Miss O’Malley?”

She turns, adjusting the strap of her weekender to regard the desk clerk. “Yeah?”

“You’re all set,” he says, sliding a packet of information across the polished glass. “Room 462. Your room key’s in the envelope. Any other questions?”

“Nope. Thanks.” Kate flips through the folder on the way to the elevators, examining the room service menu as she waits for the elevator to get to the lobby.

Stuck to the back of the breakfast offerings is a post-it note with a name, time, and location. She doesn’t recognize the handwriting as Washington’s but he’s got people everywhere. A quick glance at her watch tells her that she has about an hour and a half before the time listed for the meeting. Just enough time to change her clothes and locate the place on the post-it.

Kate swings her suitcase up onto the bed, changing into a pair of khaki shorts and a bright blue tank. She pulls her hair up into a ponytail, her curls already frizzing in the island humidity. The strands left along her face annoy her, catching in her eyelashes as she laces up her sneakers. She stuffs her wallet and phone into her pockets, the post-it note tucked in with her cash.

She considers getting another cab into town but sun is warm on her bare shoulders after the chilly rain of Ireland so she starts down the street. The app on her phone says the coffee shop is a ten minute walk from the hotel. Gives her plenty of time to scope out the area around the cafe before meeting Washington’s guy.

Instead of unhappy customers shouting at the baristas, quiet guitar music greets her when she walks in the front door. People sit in the overstuffed chairs, many with tablets plugged into the outlets. The islanders are actually enjoying the coffee shop and not using it as a stop on their way to their next destination. It’s strange and foreign after the chaos and noise of places in New York City. A little unsettled, she orders a cup of iced green tea and sits against one of the pale orange walls so that she has a view of the door. Every time it opens, a little bell jingles brightly. But none of the people glance her way as they get their coffee for the way home.

None of them until a skinny man in an untucked dress shirt and jeans, a beaten-up leather bag hitting his thigh with each step. He doesn’t bother approaching the counter or examining the pastries on display. He walks straight to her table, sitting down without asking permission.

“You from the continent?”

Kate nods, tracing a finger through the water on the side of her cup. “By way of Washington. You?”

The man shifts the chair until he can see the entrance as well, tapping his fingers - two first, then adding a third - on the table just shy of her wrist. Washington’s code to let her know the man is a friend. “Nope. Been an islander my whole life.”

She smiles, just the tiniest quirking up of her lips, before taking a sip of the tea. “Well, you should visit the mainland sometime. It’s lovely.”

“I’m sure,” the man says. He leans an elbow on the table as he slides the bag onto her lap. “I hope you’ll spend some time on The Big Island. It’s as beautiful as you are, Miss O’Malley.”

“Thanks,” Kate murmurs. She stands smoothly, looping the messenger bag over her shoulder, and picking up her empty plastic cup. “Hope to see you in Washington at some point.”

She doesn’t go straight back to the hotel, taking a long loop around a few blocks just in case; she doesn’t see a tail but experience tell her it’s better to be safe than sorry. The streets are free of people following her but she still holds her breath until she’s in the elevator to her floor. She resists opening the bag that has settled against the back of her thigh until the door to her room is locked.

Kate changes into leggings and a shirt that keeps sliding over her shoulder, the soft clothes an attempt at relaxation. She cradles the hotel phone in the crook of her neck, ordering dinner via room service as she works the leather strap through the brass buckle. With chicken parmesan on the way up, she finally pulls the stack of files from the bag.

She doesn’t need to find the folder of information she has stored on her computer; the details are already in her head, written into her memory. Grabbing the little pad of paper from the nightstand and a pen, Kate starts outlining the new information, her dinner going cold at the foot of the bed as she tries to track down the stones that got her mother killed.


	3. Chapter 3

She gets up before the humidity can settle in around the island. Kate pulls her hair into a messy knot and stretches her arms over her head as the coffee machine starts up, rolling her head from side to side to loosen the muscles. She only got four hours last night after she fell asleep on top of her notepad, pen still in her hand, but she’s worked on less.

Holding a cup of sub-par hotel coffee to her chest, she regards the disorganized files over the end of the bed until her phone vibrates from somewhere under the pile.

“What do you have so far?” Washington asks before she can open her mouth to answer the call.

“Your man came through,” she says, finding her legal pad with her notes. “Looks like the jewels got to North America in the early eighties. A guy, Adam Coleman, found them in 1990 and that’s the last mention of them.”

She hears the quick keystrokes of typing through the speaker for a moment before Washington speaks again. “He died a couple of years ago, survived by his wife Susan and son Martin. Seems as though Adam was close with his son. Might have said something about finding the jewels. The son works at Kilauea. Check it out, Beckett.”

He hangs up, the line going dead in her ear.

She needs to get out to the national park and talk to Martin, ask him if his father ever mentioned the Charlotte jewels.

Placing the phone on the chest of drawers next to the television, she pulls clothes from her suitcase and dresses quickly. The messenger bag fell under the bed during the night so she fishes it out, packing it with her notepad, a few pencils, and her wallet. Her phone goes into her pocket and the do not disturb sign goes on the door handle as she leaves the room, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head and adjusting the strap of the bag across her chest.

The cab drops her at a cafe near the entrance to the national park and she ducks in for a bagel with cream cheese and a bottle of water. She eats on the walk over to the Visitors Center. Despite the early hour, the place is crowded with families. Kate weaves through the people, scanning the nametags of the employees for Martin.

She makes her way across the room, snagging one of the paper maps and flipping through it until she sees a dark-haired man with the correct nametag. Martin stands under a sign declaring that tours start outside at the top of every hour. She waits until he directs a family before she leans against the wall next to him, eyeing the strangers cautiously.

“I need to talk to you,” she says, projecting her voice just enough for the man to hear.

The man turns, gives her a surprised look, then starts to move away. “I’ve got a tour to give, miss.”

“No, you don’t,” Kate counters, stepping into his path again.

“Listen, lady,” Martin starts, swatting away her hand. “I don’t have time for this. My tour starts in five minutes and ─”

“That’s all I’m asking for. You got a break room?”

Martin has his jaw set when he faces her this time. “You’ll leave if I talk to you?” Kate nods once. “Fine.”

He goes over to one of the other employees at the door, speaks quickly with a few glances back at Kate, and then returns, hands stuffed into his pockets. “This way,” he mumbles, not stopping as he walks swiftly toward the back of the building.

The break room holds a ratty couch shoved into a corner under some peeling wallpaper, a television from the nineties balanced on a stained coffee table across from it. A timed air freshener spritzes out a floral scent in an attempt to combat the smell of stale sweat, the combination making her nose wrinkle. A water cooler gurgles quietly next to a refrigerator with a microwave sitting on a rickety card table, the glass door crusted with someone’s exploded spaghetti sauce. Martin stalks to the makeshift kitchen and takes a bottle of water from the fridge as Kate closes the door of the room.

“So?” he asks, standing against the fridge after taking a sip of water.

“You have information about an event that I’m interested in,” Kate says, moving to sit on the arm of the couch.

“Doubt it.”

“Charlotte.” Martin’s eyes drift to the right, just for a moment, before they settle on a point over Kate’s shoulder. His fingers twist around the bottle, the plastic crackling loudly in the room. “See? You know plenty about it. Spill, Martin.”

He sighs, capping the water bottle. “What is it with you people? It’s just a story,” he says, pacing away from the fridge. “My dad used to tell it to me when I couldn’t sleep at night. Because, really? It’s ridiculous. You don’t believe it, do you?”

“You think I’m here for fun?”

“Seriously? Wow, okay.” He crosses his arms. “Dad said he once saw the jewels on the island when he was little. Said he and a friend were exploring one of the old lava tubes and found them in a cavern. But they felt the ground shake and ran off before they could get closer. That’s all I know.”

“Where was the lava tube?” she asks, pushing off of the couch.

He shrugs. “Somewhere off the Thurston Lava Tube. Don’t know exactly where. Because it’s a myth.”

Except it’s not. Because she can see so clearly the images of her mother slumped against the bricks of the alley. She can smell the sharp sting of her father’s breath as he tried to erase the memory with whisky and vodka and any other alcohol he could find.

She wishes it were a myth.

“Thanks, Martin,” Kate says, going to open the door. “Wait.” Martin is right at her heels, scowl back on his face. “You said ‘you people.’ Who else has been asking about the Charlotte?”

“I dunno. Some guy, like, an hour ago.”

“Specifics.”

He rolls his eyes and she narrows hers until he starts to talk. “Tall. Muscular. Dark hair. Just as pushy and annoying as you. Made me give him my dad’s old journals from when he was a kid in case he wrote about it. I had to go home to get them in order to get the guy to shut up and leave.”

The description could be any one of thousands of men. But she knows - she knows - that it was Castle.

Always one step ahead.

“Okay. Go give your tour,” she says, swinging the door open and allowing the man go past her.

She lets her head fall back against the doorjam for a moment before she pulls herself together, shoves away from the scarred wood, and starts to figure out how to catch up to the bastard.

 

* * *

 

She calls a cab instead of walking the forty minutes down to the crater. She gets dropped off in a parking lot after shoving the bills through the divider, shifting the strap of the leather bag over her shoulder as she follows the signs to the trail. There are a few informational signs about how the lava tube was formed, the history of Kilauea and the surrounding volcanoes, which craters were active at what times. She bypasses the signs and goes down the stairs to the paved path.

The lava tube looks as though someone came and poured chocolate syrup along the walls without letting it dry completely, smooth and brown and almost shimmering in the low lighting. The humidity still presses down on her even underground, the air damp and heavy, and she barely avoids stepping into one of the puddles that have formed on the pathway. The yellow splash from the lights isn’t bright but can see the people around her by the glow of their cell phones as they take photos.

This trip could be pointless. Castle may have already been here, found the jewels, and be on his way back to his hotel to report that he’s been successful but he could be lingering on the island like the cocky bastard he is so she clings to that hope as she follows the path down into the lava tube. The tunnel splits in front of her, stairs to the right with a gated area to the left.

Castle could have done the same thing, slipping through the darkness to find the hidden treasure. She captures her lower lip between her teeth, worrying the chapped skin before she sighs and digs into her bag for the mini Maglite, twisting the top and angling the light onto the gate. 

“Uh, miss?” A park ranger pokes her head around the cropping of rock near the stairs. “Sorry, but we’re not letting anyone go down to the rest of the lava tube today. Got some weird readings on the computers this morning and we’re playing it safe.”

Kate smiles, closing the gate and switching off the flashlight. “That’s fine,” she says.

She takes the stairs back up to the tropical forest surrounding the trail. Relief floods her veins. If the route was closed off since the morning, Castle wouldn’t have had the chance to check the area.

Kate blinks into the bright sunlight outside the tunnel until she manages to find her sunglasses, wedged down between a notebook and her phone. The paved trail twists to the left with a dirt road off to the right. If she can’t go down the off-limits part of the cavern, she has to go down this road. It may lead to the middle of nowhere but the chance that Castle took the same path compels her to step off the pavement and onto the overgrown walkway.

The curling vines and plants invade the narrow trail, ferns brushing her calves as she kicks at bits of basalt. The first sign of another person on the path comes in the form of the distinct lines of a boot print in the dust. A clear outline of a large shoe just along the edge of the path, not smudged with wind and weather yet. Recent with no returning prints.

Kate feels a quick rush of adrenaline. This boot print - it has to be Castle’s. She tamps down on the elation that rises up in her chest. Focus. She needs to focus.

She walks around the print and matches the long strides of the person who made the path in the dirt, brushing aside the plants that hang in her way.

A grunt cuts through the air, a hissed curse right at its heels.

She jogs around the next bend in the trail. Two men stand opposite one another, feet squared off and guns pointing unwaveringly at the other.

And there, facing her from just over the shoulder of the other man, she finds Richard Castle.


	4. Chapter 4

Kate has to give him some credit. The only sign that he sees her comes from the slight flicker of surprise through his eyes before he focuses again on the other man and the tensing of his jaw despite the dark purple bruise across the skin there.

She weighs her options. She can turn and leave him, let him fend for himself like she knows he can. Or she can help and hold it over his head for the foreseeable future.

Right now, she’s liking the latter.

Shifting her weight carefully, Kate steps forward while slowly pulling the strap of her leather bag over her head. Her eyes flicker down to the hand holding the gun trained on Castle’s chest but she pushes back the tingle of fear with each step.

Castle blinks his eyes twice and she moves.

Kate has to push up on her toetips to get the strap over the tall man’s head, pulling it tight when the resistance comes immediately. She gets jerked up off her feet completely before she yanks hard on the leather to get back to the ground. Fingers scramble to get some air but Kate tightens her grip, crisscrossing the ends of the strap. She needs the upper hand here and she doesn’t have it.

She kicks at the back of his knees and the man drops to the dirt road. Castle crowds into her side until she elbows him sharply. “I’ve got this,” she growls.

The man gasps briefly as she loosens the tension on the leather. Then she holds the strap long enough that the man crumples forward. Sliding her bag from under his neck, Kate crouches to check the pulse along his neck. Faint but still there. She reaches over and takes the gun from his limp fingers.

“Thanks.”

She turns, shoving the gun into her bag. “You owe me,” she says, looping the strap back over one shoulder.

Kate studies him. Really studies him. The six months since she last saw him have been kind. He’s trimmed down his waist and she can see the flex of his biceps under his white t-shirt and the lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth only serve to enhance his attractiveness.

She opens her mouth to tell him that he looks good but he cuts her off with a scoffed laugh. “Well, seeing how as I was handling him already…”

“Ah. That explains the slightly panicked look in your face when you saw me,” Kate says, turning back down the path toward the pavement. She hears him starting along behind her. “You were ‘handling him’. Interesting technique, Castle.”

“Like you could have done better,” he grumbles. “What’re you doing here anyway?”

Kate glances over her shoulder, shooting him a smile. “Vacation.”

“Yeah, right.”

She pauses at the intersection of the trails before taking a right to get out of the area surrounding the lava tube. “Why’re you here?”

“My doctor said I needed rest and relaxation,” Castle says, edging closer so that his bare arm brushes hers with every swing. “There are some amazing spas down here.”

“So,” she continues. “Getting in a fight and pointing a gun at some guy near a volcano nowhere near a spa is your idea of getting some rest?”

He shrugs. “To each their own.”

The parking lot comes into view and Kate spins to poke Castle sharply between the ribs. “Do not get in my way,” she hisses. “Go rest and relax on your own section of the island.”

“Fine. As long as my part of the island is the southeastern part.”

“My hotel’s on that part so, no,” Kate says, circling around him. His bag hangs from his shoulder, the top flap enticingly untied. “That’s not happening.”

“I was here first, Beckett,” he reminds her.

Before she can think it over, she sneaks her fingers under the canvas flap, searching for the hard edge of a journal. The tip of her middle finger hits something but Castle spins, grabbing her wrist just as she gets a grip on it.

“You trying to cop a feel?” he asks, that annoying smirk teasing at his mouth. “Just had to ask me; I’m more than happy to oblige.”

She yanks her hand back, rubbing it against her capris. “In your dreams.”

“When are you going to learn? In my dreams, you just join in.”

Kate rolls her eyes as she takes her phone out to get a cab. “And that’s all you’ll ever get of me.”

He hovers, hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels as she waits for a dispatch officer. “You sure you don’t want a lift?” he asks finally, jingling the set of keys next to her ear.

“No,” she says, shifting the receiver away from her mouth. She listens to the dispatcher, growls. It’s going to be an hour until they can get someone out to the parking lot. She doesn’t want to rely on Castle to get back to her hotel but the faster she gets there, the faster she can figure out a way to get hold of that journal. Kate ends the call. “This means nothing. Understand?”

Castle smiles, nodding toward the sleek black sedan. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

She slides into the passenger seat and buckles the seat belt as he starts the engine. Immediately, the car fills with the sound of classic rock, a little too loud for comfort. He doesn’t turn the volume down, letting the guitar and drums echo off the trees surrounding the parking lot while he pulls out of the space. Castle rolls down all of the windows, taking a pair of sunglasses from the center console and hooking them over his ears.

“So, where exactly is your hotel?” he shouts over the roar of the wind.

Kate’s eyes drift to the bag that he tossed onto the floor of the passenger side. “Near the airport. The Hilo Hotel.”

“Here,” he says, calling up the GPS on the dashboard screen. “Put the address in. I haven’t figured out my way around the island yet.”

She taps the street address into the console, waiting until the little yellow arrow pops up on the virtual map and the soft-spoken lady begins to talk to them before sitting back into the seat. It’s a forty-five minute drive back to downtown Hilo. Gives her plenty of time to figure out how to get that journal from the bag at her feet.

Except for the entirety of the forty-five minutes, Castle chats, voice barely heard over the wind and radio. He talks about the island, about the songs playing, about the books he’s read lately. It annoys her, his words cluttering up in her head and distracting her from coming up with a solid plan. She considers trying to just switch the bags, take his canvas one and leave her leather one. But she has some of the papers and notes from the file she left on her bed and she does not want Castle getting ahold of those.

She isn’t paying attention until he pulls into a restaurant parking lot. “This isn’t my hotel,” she says as he throws the vehicle into park.

“I’m hungry,” he replies with a shrug. “You can come in and eat or sit in the car. Up to you.”

Kate considers snagging his keys from where they dangle on his fingers. But she’s hungry and he’s already walking away from the car so she scrambles out after him.

“Table for two?” asks the hostess, already gathering up menus from the box next to her.

“Yes” Castle says just as Kate shakes her head, responding “No.”

The hostess looks confused, glancing between them with the two menus held to her chest.

Kate grabs Castle’s elbow, dragging him away from the podium with a quick smile back at the hostess. “I am not eating lunch with you,” she whispers harshly. “We are not together. At all. Ever.”

“I know, but it’s just lunch,” he says. “Come on, Kate. Don’t you ever have any fun? Cut loose? Let your hair down?”

The lethal combination of his words and the subtle quirk of his brow mirroring his smirk makes it a challenge. Fine. He wants to play hardball, she can play.

She takes a deep breath before looking back at the hostess. “Sorry. We’ll take that table for two.”

This time, Castle trails behind her on the walk through the restaurant to a table against the back wall. She catches a glimpse of his surprised expression before he covers it with a careful poker face, sitting down across from her and looking at the menu.

A careful truce falls over them during lunch. They ignore one another except when she asks for the salt and he gets her to hand him the bottle of A1 sauce. She does let a laugh escape when a bit of tomato nearly falls off his burger and onto his lap, earning her a glare even though he catches it before it can hit the denim. They split the bill, leaving cash under her empty glass.

Only when they get back to the car does Kate realize that before lunch would have been the perfect time to grab the journal and slip it into her bag.

The canvas bag taunts her, sitting right next to her feet as Castle drives the last fifteen minutes to her hotel. He leaves his sunglasses off, hooked in the v-neck of his shirt, and she can see the barely hidden joy in his eyes as he pulls into the curved driveway along the front doors.

With a last glance at his bag, Kate gathers hers up, looping the strap over her shoulder. “Thanks for the ride,” she says, leaning her forearm on the window. “And lunch. I appreciate it.”

“Debt paid?” he asks.

“Not a chance,” Kate replies, stretching her arm out to pat his cheek, feeling the rough stubble against her fingertips. “Bye, Castle.”

She throws a little more sway into her hips than strictly necessary as she walks around the hibiscus plant and into the hotel lobby.


	5. Chapter 5

She needs that journal. Without it, she’s stuck sitting on her bed in the hotel room in the soft bathrobe she found in the closet, watching the evening news, the same headlines being repeated every twenty minutes. Kate visited the gym and went for a swim in the hotel pool as she attempted to clear her head and come up with an alternate solution. But she has nothing. She has nothing and it really pisses her off.

She stretches her legs out in front of her, feeling the tight pull of her calf muscles from the run on the treadmill. Her fingers push aside some of the papers from the file, hoping the something, anything, will jump out at her. Some other clue to where the jewels could be besides whatever Martin’s father saw and wrote in his journal. Someone else had to have seen the necklace and bracelet and a bunch of loose diamonds.

The growl of her stomach and the clock on her bedside table remind her that she hasn’t eaten anything since lunch. Kate grabs the black binder of room service, flipping to the menus from the local restaurants that deliver to the hotel.

She studies the menus, the breeze from the open windows to the balcony making the belt around her robe sway. Chinese. Chinese sounds good. Kate picks up the room phone, holding it in the curve of her shoulder as she finds the phone number on the menu.

The knock on the door echoes.

Kate puts the binder back down, moving over to the bed to wrap her fingers around the grip of the Sig she took from the thug. The carpeted floor silences her footsteps as she walks over to the door, careful not to touch the wood when she leans in to look through the peephole.

It’s Castle. Castle with a duffel bag over his shoulder, shifting closer to the door as a couple walks behind him. He raises his hand to knock again until she opens the door, keeping the security chain in place.

“Hi,” he says, trying to hide the sheepishness in his voice. She sees his eyes dart to the gun resting against her thigh. “You gonna shoot me, Beckett?”

“Might. What’re you doing here?”

He looks down the hall. “Can we talk about it somewhere else? Maybe without a door between us? Unless, of course, you have company.”

Kate narrows her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Let me in. I don’t want to talk about it out here.”

She closes the door, slides the chain from the gully in the door, and reopens it. “Get in,” she says with a quick jerk of her head toward the room. As soon as his duffel clears the doorway, Kate relocks everything.

“So,” he drawls, standing in the middle of the room. She glances at the file still spread out on her bed and tightens the belt of the bathrobe, feeling her whole being exposed to him. “The batcave.”

“Why are you here?” she asks again, leaning her shoulder against the wall.

He sighs. “My place was ransacked.”

“And your first thought was ‘Hey! Let’s go visit Beckett’?”

“No. My first thought was ‘Goddamn those fuckers.’ The third or fourth thought was that I needed to get to someone I trust. And since you’re the only one I know on the island, that honor falls to you.”

“Lucky me,” Kate mumbles. “How long?”

“Don’t know. If they found my hideout, they’ll find this one. Isn’t it better to take them on together?”

“Why? Why help you?”

“I have information.” When she snorts out a laugh, he places the duffel bag on the desk and digs out the journal. “You were trying so hard to get at this earlier. Can we make a deal? You let me stay here and I’ll tell you what I know about your mother’s case.”

The room goes silent. Even the hum from the mini fridge and the ruffle of the wind through the curtains lower in volume as if aware of the sudden tension. She can’t breathe as her heart leaps into her throat, blocking the air from ever reaching her lungs.

“What?” she breathes out. “How... How do you know about...?”

“Do we have a deal?”

She shakes her head, turning back toward the bathroom. “I need a second.”

She leans on the counter, the tiles freezing under her bare feet and the air conditioning chills her still-damp hair as it tumbles off her shoulders. The pressure against her palms slows the shaking of her hands. She focuses on breathing, steadying the quick gasps into a slower, even pattern. It doesn’t normally hit her like this. Like it happened yesterday or a week ago and the pain still rests in the front of her mind. It’s not. It’s been nearly fifteen years and she needs to get a hold of herself. Especially if she decides to let Castle stay in her room.

Kate tucks her hair back behind her ears, wishing once again that she had on something more than the hotel bathrobe. But she isn’t so desperate as to pull on the sweaty gym clothes just so the man doesn’t get a better glimpse of her legs.

He turns suddenly when she opens the door, dropping the list of television channels back onto the desk. “You okay?”

She hears the subtle thread of actual concern running through his voice but pushes it to the back of her mind. “Fine. You can stay.” Kate walks past him, snagging her pajama shorts and a clean t-shirt. “Just the night.” She pulls the threadbare navy shorts up under the hem of the bathrobe, tying the strings of the waistband. For a moment, she considers ducking back into the bathroom to pull her shirt on but to hell with it; while Castle has his back turned, she lets the terrycloth slide off her shoulders and yanks the t-shirt over her head.

His eyes are wide when she finishes freeing her hair from the neckline of the shirt and she knows he got a glimpse of her pale skin. He doesn’t say a word, though, as he toes off his boots.

Kate curls her leg up under her when she sits on the bed. “I was about to order dinner. Chinese okay with you?”

Castle looks surprised at her hospitality. “Uh, sure.”

 

* * *

 

Awkward silence settles over the room.

She sits against the headboard of the bed, a carton of kung pao chicken in her hand and a small container of vegetables with crispy lo mein noodles and soy sauce on the side table. He took the teriyaki beef and noodles to the chair in the corner. The evening news plays on the television, volume low enough that they can hear the crash of waves from outside the balcony over the report on the weather coming from the screen.

He sits in the overstuffed armchair with a mouthful of noodles, feet balanced on the edge of the mattress like he owns the room. Casual and confident in a way that makes her angry.

“You know about my mother’s case,” she says, putting the kung pao on the table and leaning forward. “How?”

“Come on,” he says, a forkful of food hovering between the take-out carton and his mouth. “Everyone in this business knows about Johanna Beckett.”

“But you know something about her murder. Something not in the public record. Tell me or you can take your food and get ━”

He puts the carton on the corner of the bureau, standing up to get his bag. “Okay. So, Johanna was murdered in 1999 in an alley in New York City,” he continues as he sits on the edge of the bed.

“I know all that. I’m her daughter, remember?” Kate snaps. “I had to identify her body that night and live without closure for fifteen years now. Get to the point.”

“You know why she was killed?”

Kate shakes her head as she rubs at her eyes. “The cops said random gang violence but I never believed them.”

“You shouldn’t have. They were wrong,” he says, digging into the canvas bag to take out a large notebook. Leaves of paper peek out from the pages, too big to properly fit into the moleskine. “They said gang violence in order to cover up the real reason.” Castle finds the correct papers, a collection stuffed into a manila folder, and slides them over the bed toward her. “Someone put a hit out on your mother. They wanted her silenced before she got too close to the Charlotte jewels.”

She crosses her legs, opening the folder in front of her. The same autopsy report, the police write-up including interviews with witnesses and family members. Kate skims her fingers over her own words, long since memorized from the statement she gave in the family living room, freezing from the cold of January and the shock that hadn’t quite set in yet. It had later, after the uniforms had left, when Kate spent the night on the bathroom floor, crying and throwing up the dinner she had eaten while complaining about her mother’s tardiness.

At the back of the folder, she sees that Castle somehow got new information. Print-outs of financials for a hitman named Dick Coonan, killed during another investigation, link his money to an overseas account but no one ever put the connection into the reports.

“How does Coonan tie in?” she asks, pushing her hair out of her face.

“He was the one.”

Kate looks up, finds Castle a little closer than before. “This is the guy who killed my mom?”

Castle nods. “As far as I can figure. Those payments from the off-shore account are untraceable, even for me, but see the dates,” he says, leaning over to point at the highlighted transactions. “Look familiar?”

January 5, 1999. Four days before her mother’s murder.

“And these other dates?”

“The three other people that Coonan silenced.” He reaches across her for the other file, flipping through the papers until he gets to the correct one. “These names ring a bell?”

Diane Cavanaugh, Scott Murray, and Jennifer Stewart.

“Vaguely. I think Diane and Jennifer worked with Mom on one of her non-profits but I didn’t know them well.” Kate sits back against the headboard, taking the file with her. “You’re telling me that they’re connected?”

He shifts closer still. “Have to be. The same amount of money was transferred from the off-shore account to Coonan just days before their murders. We just need to figure out who owns the account.”

“How?”

Castle shrugs, swinging off the bed to grab his food. “Haven’t figured that out yet. I’ve been stuck,” he explains as he scoots in next to her, his hip pressed against hers.

She doesn’t move away; the bedside table blocks any escape to the left and she can see the tiny smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, knows it’ll grow exponentially if she shows any annoyance. “How’d you end up here?”

“You invited me in.”

Kate snakes her arm back around his neck, pinches his earlobe between her index finger and thumb, and twists sharply. The man next to her yelps, squirming away from her.

“Jesus, woman!” he shouts, prying her hand from his ear. “It was a joke!” He rubs the side of his head, eyes narrowed in her direction. “You think you’re the only one who knows the history of the Charlotte jewels? If the other hunters were as smart and savvy as we are, Hawaii would be populated by people playing at Indiana Jones.”

“Or you’re just lucky,” she says.

“Shut up. I was complimenting you too.”

“Really, though. I’m stuck on a personal vendetta. Why are you treasure hunting?”

He grins, shrugging. “Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.”

She rolls her eyes, closing up the take-out containers next to her as she escapes from his side. Once she tosses the trash, she leans against the bureau. “Now what?”

“I can’t go back to my place,” he says, getting up to add his cartons to the trash. “You’ve seen some of what I have. I think we could do this together.”

“Together?”

“Yeah. We’d be a good team.”

Kate glances at his notebook of information, the journal from Martin’s father still sitting on the bureau. She wants the jewels but she needs the answers about her mother’s murder more. With the promise to kick him to the curb as soon as he truly pisses her off, she nods once.

“Fine. But you’re still not sleeping in the bed with me.”


	6. Chapter 6

Kate wakes up slowly, her body heavy with exhaustion that the few hours of sleep did nothing to solve. She considers rolling over for another couple of hours, using a pillow to block out the early morning sunlight filtering in through the sheer curtains. Very nearly does just that before she moves to cuddle deeper into the covers and sees the man sitting on the floor.

Already wide awake, Castle sits propped up against the sliding door out to the balcony, his hair mussed from sleep and she can make out crease lines from the pillow she tossed him after he whined about how hard the floor was. Even with her face mashed into the bed, Kate can see the muscles in his legs bared by his boxer shorts.

“Morning,” he says when she pushes up into a sitting position, legs crossed under the blankets.

She runs her fingers through her hair, feeling them catch on the tangles as she lets her forehead fall into her palms. “The staring is creepy,” she replies.

He only shrugs. “I was up and bored and you were there, all sleepy and snoring.” When she glares, he holds up his hands in surrender. “Adorably, I might add.”

“Well, as long as I was adorable,” Kate mutters. She feels the fatigue already trying to pull her back under, her body still comfortably warm from sleep, so she shoves the covers back and steps out of bed. His gaze slides over her legs as she turns on the coffee machine. “Sleep well?”

“Not nearly as well as you did, I’m sure,” he says, getting up off the ground and flopping into the armchair instead, legs stretched out in front of him. “Hogging that huge bed.”

“I did tell you that there was no way in hell you were getting in with me,” she reminds him, shaking the sugar packet before ripping it open to pour into the cardboard cup. “You always could have found your own room for the night instead of free-loading.”

Castle grumbles something from the corner while Kate sets about combing her hair, alternating with sips of coffee. It dried kinked up and brushing it does nothing to straighten it out, only causing the ends to curl further. She leaves it loose, though, letting it spill over her shoulders as she brushes her teeth. There are dark smudges under her eyes and she smooths her thumb over them, trying to make them disappear. Kate drops her hands to her sides when she realizes her attempts to look better are for the man sitting in her hotel room.

“We doing breakfast?” he asks when she comes back into the bedroom.

Kate takes out clothes from her suitcase, tossing them onto the bed. “We?”

“Yes. We’re a team. We need a team breakfast to, you know,” he says, unzipping his duffel, “strategize.”

“We can strategize right here, Castle,” Kate replies, pulling her bra up under the loose sleep shirt to hook the clasp behind her back, slipping her arms through the straps. He stares, mouth open. “What?”

“You put that on without taking your shirt off.”

Kate smiles. “One of my many superpowers. Get dressed and I’ll see about breakfast.”

He walks past her with an armful of clothing, his bare arm sliding against her shoulder as he goes by. She shivers as soon as the door to the bathroom clicks shut. His attractiveness makes him arrogant but damn if the scruff and intelligence doesn’t overshadow the ego. Still, she takes a deep breath, tamps down the little flare of lust that curls in her stomach, and pulls on the shorts and t-shirt.

By the time he returns, Kate has herself together. She tidies the bed, making sure the files aren’t left out for the housekeeping to find, and puts together her bag for the day. Her fingers touch the journal on the bureau, the one thing he hadn’t brought to the bed as they poured over his new information. She wants to look, to find the one page she needs, and then slip away from him.

She can’t. Can’t bring herself to flip through the old journal to find the mention of the lava tunnel and just go. Not when they have this strange, barely-there trust hanging between them.

“So? Breakfast a go?” His jeans hug his legs and he wears an unbuttoned green shirt over the grey tee, hair still a mess and eyes bright despite the early hour. That stupid flare of lust curls in her stomach. “Because I really don’t do my best work unless I’ve had breakfast.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” she says with a tiny smirk. She hesitates over the gun resting on her bedside table before she puts it into her bag along with the files and her wallet. “You know a place?”

Castle sits on the bed to lace up his boots. “Nope.”

“Wow. All that talk about breakfast being the most important meal of the day and you don’t have a diner or something picked out on the island?” Kate checks to make sure her room key is in her pocket before she opens the door. “Come on. We’ll find something.”

He trails behind her, standing too close in the elevator down to the lobby. The back of his hand keeps brushing against her hip, getting tangled in the strap of her bag. Every time she turns to glare at him, he keeps looking straight ahead, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He knows what he’s doing.

Well, so does she.

On the next swing, Kate slides her fingers between his. The teasing grin turns into a surprised gasp.

“What’re you doing?” he asks, trying to free his hand.

“Giving us a cover,” she says easily. “Just go with it.”

Castle tenses for a moment, his hand squeezing tightly before he relaxes into the role. “Okay, sweetheart. I heard the spa here is fantastic. Should I schedule that couple’s massage for later this afternoon or━”

She pinches the skin of his forefinger below the first knuckle. “Shut it.”

“You need to relax, honey. You know how the kids get when you’re stressed and we want Marion and Henry to have a good vacation.”

Kate spins and shoves him against the side wall of the hotel, relishing the satisfying thump as his shoulders hit the white marble. He manages to stop his head from colliding with the stone; she isn’t sure it would have done any damage, empty as it is. “Keep this up and I will break both of your legs,” she says with a smile. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.” Her hands go into her pockets as she starts back down the street, refusing to hold hands with him even for their thin cover as a couple. “Breakfast, then we figure out where to go next.”


	7. Chapter 7

She locates a Starbucks. He insists on paying for the coffees, her banana-macadamia nut muffin, and his own cinnamon roll. They eat out at one of the tables on the patio, the sun spilling onto the tiny table and warming her bare legs without the barrier of an umbrella.

“We need to go back to the lava tube,” she says, picking at the cardboard sleeve around her coffee cup. “Martin said that his father saw the jewels down there and I want to see if maybe they’re still ━”

“Already looked,” Castle cuts in. He brushes off the crumbs of his cinnamon roll onto the paper bag. “There’s nothing there.”

“Did you look in the other tunnels?”

He fixes her with a glare over the top of his coffee cup. “I’m not new at this, Beckett. Yes, I looked around before leaving.”

She narrows her eyes at him as she stuffs the wrapper of her muffin into his empty bag. “Fine. Then what do you suggest we do next?”

Castle frowns, rolling the bag of trash into a ball. “Well, I know the guy you took out yesterday wasn’t one of mine.”

“Wasn’t one of mine either,” she says, pushing the chairs into the table as they move back into the street.

“Which means there’s a third party involved.”

Kate shifts her bag closer to her side as they weave through the crowd of people looking for coffee on their way into work. “Okay. So we need to figure out who that is. I say we go back to the lava tube mentioned in the journal. Maybe you missed something.”

“I didn’t miss anything,” he insists, affronted and glaring at her.

“Fine. But I still want to look around for myself.”

She hails a cab, more comfortable with them on even footing rather than having him behind the wheel again. Kate slides in first, shifting her bag into her lap so that he can follow. His thigh settles against hers, warm and strong along her bare leg as the cab starts toward Kilauea. She ignores it.

“Let me see the diary,” she says. When he narrows his eyes, his hand drifting to hold down the flap of his bag, Kate sighs. “Come on. We’re either sharing information or not.”

He hesitates, fingers curling around the battered edge of the messenger bag and studying her face before he undoes the buckle and takes out the journal. “Near the end. It’s marked.”

Kate flips through to the ribbon bookmark, frayed and faded with age. The sloppy handwriting covers yellowed pages, the lines so unevenly written that the last sentence on the page ended up squeezed in and nearly illegible. She leans forward in the seat to read the description of the lava tube and how Martin’s father found the location in the first place. The man was careful with his details and even went so far as to include a map to the correct tunnel.

“Searched that tunnel,” he says from over her shoulder.

She traces her finger over the map, finding the tiny, red cross about halfway down the tube. “Yeah, but ‘x’ never, ever marks the spot. That’s where you went wrong. We should look in all of these.”

“Could take some time.”

“We’ve got all morning,” she says. “There are four of them. They can’t be that long if they’re branched off from the main tunnel so it shouldn’t keep you out past your bedtime, Castle.”

“Funny,” he mutters, taking back the journal.

During the remainder of the drive back to the national park, she checks her phone for updates from Washington. Overnight, he sent a list of other agents in the state in case she needs back-up. Just two men she had worked with in the past on larger searches; she found Esposito and Ryan both competent and easy-going as a team. There are no other e-mails from her boss; he knows that she prefers working on her own without him hovering overhead.

Castle stays silent at her side, idly looking through the journal and reading earlier entries than the one that concerns them. Every once in awhile, he laughs, the sound short but filled with mirth until he cuts it off with a quick glance in her direction as if gauging whether she heard him. She bites at her lower lip to hide her smile; she likes seeing him as something other than her rival. Someone who can find amusement in journal entries even after having his room tossed by strangers.

He pays for the cab, hanging back to get change as she adjusts the leather bag over her shoulder.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says as they start toward the exit of the lava tube trail.

He shrugs, tucking the journal and his wallet back into his own bag. “You get lunch,” he replies, taking the lead from her. “Now, the journal says that the jewels were in the tunnel to the left and that’s the one I checked yesterday.”

“We finish with that one then,” Kate decides, having to jog a few steps to keep up with him as he strides further ahead. “But we go down to the end of each of these tunnels. Something has to show up.”

They dodge the early morning tourists who are on their way out of the main lava tube and, making sure that no one is walking by, duck through the underbrush to the dirt road. She steps as far from him as the narrow path will allow, pushing her hands into her pockets.

“So,” he says, half-turning to face her as they walk. “Washington send you down here?”

“I’m on vacation,” she returns.

“You said that before. It’s a lie. How’d Washington get you here so quickly? Last I heard, you were in Ireland.”

“Another vacation,” she says, walking faster so that she can edge ahead.

He laughs behind her and she feels his fingers brush against the small of her back, catching briefly in the strap of the messenger bag. “You take a lot of those, don’t you?”

“I get stressed easily,” Kate snaps. “Mostly because of people like you. And I have lots of frequent flyer points.”

“At least Hilo is sunnier than Dublin.” She thinks he’s done but a minute later, he adds, “And here they have those drinks with the little umbrellas and those just scream relaxation.”

The sight of the first tunnel saves Kate from having to respond. She reaches into her bag, checking to make sure that the gun has stayed tucked against the files. Just a few feet into the tunnel, the shadows overcomes the sunshine spilling in.

“It’s dark,” Castle comments.

“Gee,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “You could be a detective.” She snags her Maglite from the inside pocket of her bag, clicking it on to provide a wide beam of light in front of them.

He steps in close, their arms pressed against one another. She moves ahead but he grabs her, keeping her next to him. “Gotta stick together, Beckett,” he reminds her. “Safety in numbers.”

“We don’t need safety in numbers. It’s a dead-ended tunnel on a path that I’m sure no one else knows about.”

They start walking deeper into the tube, careful to keep in their pool of soft light.

“Yeah, good theory. Except for that guy that you took out yesterday. You take the right side, I’ll take the left.”

Her glare doesn’t bring a reaction but she’s sure it’s only because he is looking forward and not in her direction. She stays at his heels, trying to keep her feet in the flashlight beam as she watches her side of the tunnel for something out of place. More than once along the path, he stops to study something and she stumbles into him.

And then she realizes, after the second or third time she ends up holding onto his shirt with her body pressed to his back, that he’s doing it on purpose. She can feel the vibration of his barely contained laughter as she rights herself.

“What are you, nine?” she asks. “Keep walking.”

He grumbles behind her for the next five hundred yards but makes only one move to claim the flashlight. Kate hits the back of his hand without stopping the slow, steady steps forward.

“Wait!”

She ignores him until he reaches around her and moves her hand so that the beam of light illuminates a narrow offshoot of the tunnel. There, balanced on an outcropping of hardened lava and anchored under another rock, rests a slip of paper.

“Found it!” he cheers, tugging Kate over to the wall with him.

Kate holds the flashlight near her shoulder so they can both see the paper. “It’s in the wrong tunnel,” she says as he unfolds the note. “Should be the far left tunnel, not the far right.”

Castle pauses then takes the journal out of his bag, flipping to the hand-drawn map. “Unless,” he starts, “we had the map upside down.” He flips the journal over, his grin appearing sinister in the low light. “There! ‘X’ does mark the spot!” The joyful proclamation is accented with the man sticking his tongue out and blowing a raspberry in her face.

“Charming, Castle,” she says, taking the journal from him. “Open the note.”


	8. Chapter 8

The notebook paper feels like it will fall apart, wrinkled and yellowed from time. Martin’s father wrote in pencil so some sections of the note have faded but huddled together around the spot of light, they’re able to make out some of the writing.

Martin’s father mentions the original discovery of the jewels as a teen. He goes on to talk about how he returned to the lava tube years later when the jewels stayed in the back of his mind even through college. A history class gave him the push to return to their hiding place, taking them from the tube, and donating them to a local museum.

They deserved the light.

“So they’re gone,” he says. “What now?”

Kate folds the paper up and tucks it into an inside pocket of her bag. “We find the museum he donated the jewels to.” When Castle doesn’t move at her side, she reaches over and directs the flashlight toward the exit. “Come on, Indiana.”

On the walk back toward the sunshine, she feels his hand hooking at the waistband of her shorts. She almost brushes it off as the way he walks until she remembers the way he did the same thing that morning. As if he needs a touchstone even when he knows she’s right beside him.

So he likes touching things.

He likes touching her.

After the time in the tunnel, she squints into the sunlight as she takes out her phone. He helps steer her back toward the paved path as she searches for local museums that would have been interested in taking in some jewels. It feels as though they’ve been doing this forever, working as a team. Like he knows she’ll trip over her own feet without the subtle guidance from his fingertips at her waist letting her know when to turn.

“There are two that make sense,” she tells him as they rejoin the groups of tourists coming from the main lava tube. “A cultural center and a museum of island history.”

“I’d say try the actual museum first,” he suggests, calling up the cab company from his own phone. “Chances are that it’s been around longer than a cultural center.”

She begins to disagree - the cultural center could have easily been around before the museum opened - but he holds up a finger as he gives the cab their location. Castle thanks the dispatcher before turning back to her. “For all we know, that cultural center is run by the senior center as something to get the cottonheads out of their homes. Try the more credible location first. We can always swing by the cultural center for bingo if the museum doesn’t work out. Cab’s about twenty minutes out.”

Kate sits on one of the benches in the parking lot next to a board of information on the lava tube while Castle reads the facts out loud to her. She pays attention to him for the first five minutes before taking the letter out to read over again.

They deserved the light.

Her mother deserves the light. She needs to find out who the man from yesterday worked for. If that man was trying to keep anyone from finding this letter, they might know why this case killed her mom.

“Did you hear that, Beckett?” Castle asks, jolting her out of her thoughts when he flops down next to her. “The volcano is active so the island is still growing. Pretty cool, huh?”

“And the next Hawaiian island is already forming and has a name,” she adds, shifting to let a mother sit next to her with a screaming child. “Loihi. Learned about it in one of my college geology courses.”

He stays in the lull of conversation for all of thirty seconds before he has his phone back out and Temple Run started up.

She leans against his side to see the screen, knocking the runner off-balance and allowing the creepy monster-bird hybrids to gain ground on the man. Castle glares as he swipes to get the runner to turn a corner. “Is the game boring compared to real life?” she questions, watching as his brow furrows in concentration. “Or is it just as exciting as running from real enemies?”

“Just as exciting,” he replies, eyes still on the phone screen.

“But why?”

He shrugs. “Because it’s a game. I can respawn and start over if I fall off or get caught. Can’t do that in the real world.”

“Okay,” she concedes. “But why play a game that is basically the virtual version of your life? Why not Words with Friends or Candy Crush or Angry Birds?”

“I suck at Words, matching games annoy me, and I really like pigs so throwing nasty birds at their faces doesn’t work for me,” he rattles off as he makes the man jump over a chasm. “Do you play any of those games?”

“I don’t really play any,” Kate says, sitting back against the bench to free up his arm to tilt the phone. “Not on my phone, at least.”

The treasure hunter gets caught by the bird creatures and Castle huffs out a sigh. “What do you do in your free time then?”

“Board games. Cards. I read.”

“Which board game do you kick ass on?”

She grins. “Clue.”

“Interesting,” he says, hitting the lock button on the top of the phone and sliding it into his pocket when he spots a cab.

Kate gives the driver the address of the museum. “Give me your phone,” she says, reaching over him for the black case still sticking out of his pocket.

He scoots into the corner of the cab, holding the phone out of her range. “Why?”

“I want to see why that game is so entrancing. Hand it over.”

“No. Download it on your own phone,” he says, pushing his phone into his back pocket.

Kate sits back against the seat with a groan. “Fine.” She waits patiently until he relaxes. Then she slowly stretches her right arm into the space between his lower back and the cracked leather seat. With her fore and middle finger, she wiggles the phone out of his pocket, palming it easily. “What’s your password?” she asks, thumbs already hovering over the touchscreen.

“My what?”

“Password,” Kate says, inching away from him when he turns to look at her.

“Beckett! Come on!” he shouts, grabbing for his phone.

She pushes his hands away, grinning. “Why? You have state secrets on this thing? Porn?”

Castle narrows his eyes as she tries one combination of random numbers on the keypad. “You’re gonna screw up my high score,” he insists, looking at her as though searching for a weak spot to target.

“Just gonna keep trying numbers until you tell me,” she sighs. Another wrong combination has the screen flashing a warning at her. “Hope you don’t have that setting on that wipes the phone after ten wrong tries.”

His left hand goes for her side, tickling her through the thin fabric of her shirt.

Kate nearly drops the phone in surprise but holds on as she squirms to get away. “Castle, stop!” she gasps, kicking at his leg when he grabs the wrist of the hand still holding the phone.

Then he stops and lets her go. The screen is covered with his apps, unorganized and chaotic across the main menu. “There,” he says, touching the Temple Run photo. “Don’t mess up that score.”

It takes her the length of the taxi ride back to Hilo to beat his high score.

He snags his phone back, exiting Temple Run with a scowl, every inch a sore loser. “Next chance I get,” he says, sliding out of the cab as Kate pays, “I’m challenging you to Clue so I can get even.”

“You’re on.”


	9. Chapter 9

The museum resides next to a shopping center, the facade a bright red with a simple plaque identifying it as something other than another house on the street quiet. A rush of air conditioning meets them as Castle holds the door open for her.

“Welcome to the Hilo Museum,” greets the middle aged man just inside.

“Thanks.” Kate reaches into her bag for her notebook. “We’re reporters,” she says, gesturing with the pencil back at Castle. “And we were wondering if you knew anything about a collection of jewelry that would have been donated to this establishment maybe fifteen years ago.”

The man looks confused for a moment. “Um, let me get the museum curator. He’d know about donations that far back.”

Castle wanders over to one of the displays, hands behind his back as he reads. Kate follows, looking for a mention of the Charlotte jewels.

“I’m Peter Iger. Can I help you?” The curator looks young, slightly taller than she is with dark features, wearing jeans and a button down. “Drew said you wanted to know about a donation.”

“Yes,” Castle says, walking over to meet the man. “I’m Alex Rodgers.”

“Rachel O’Malley,” Kate adds, shaking Peter’s hand.

“We were wondering what you knew about a jewelry collection,” says Castle. “It would have been donated to the museum around fifteen years ago.”

“Let’s go into the back. I have the donation ledger in my office.” Peter leads them through a display of art to a back hallway. He steps into a tidy office and Kate waits out in the hall while the man takes a leather book down from a shelf. “You don’t know the year?” he asks, thumbing through the pages until he reaches the general area.

“Not really. Family friend didn’t mention the exact date,” Castle lies. “We just know he donated them to a museum in Hilo.”

Peter hums, nodding as he flips through the pages. Castle takes a few steps into the office, looking over the other man’s shoulder at the ledger.

“I don’t see anything around that time period,” Peter admits.

“It’s fine,” Kate says with a smile. “We’re checking all of the museums in the area and you’re not the first to have no idea about the collection.”

“You’re sure I can’t be of more help? Maybe I could call some people, see if they know about━”

“No, thank you,” cuts in Castle. “We appreciate your time, Mr. Iger.”

Once they exit the museum, Castle tugs her around the corner and into a dark alley. “Where’s the cultural center?”

Kate pulls up the address on her phone, plugging it into the map app. “Close. Says it’s a twenty minute walk.”

“Then let’s go,” he says, starting down the street.

“Uh, Castle?” She waits until he glances back at her, still in the entrance of the alley. “It’s this way,” she says, pointing in the opposite direction.

She wants to come up with a plan. A plan to find out who the hell the mystery man was from yesterday and what kind of stake Castle has in this whole thing. But the man next to her keeps touching her elbow when she starts to fall back with a tiny smile on his face like he cares about more than the bounty payout and Kate has no idea how to deal with that.

“What if the cultural center is a dead-end?” she asks as they turn a corner.

“Then we’ll find another place. Maybe Martin’s dad mentioned a favorite museum in the journal or we go talk to Martin himself again. I don’t think his dad would have gone off the island to donate them.”

The cultural center consists of just one large room with posters on the walls, a few display cases along the edge of the room with the signs for the pieces of jewelry and bits of artifacts are written out on what looks to be the backs of index cards. The front desk, unmanned at the entrance, holds some pamphlets in plastic stands. Castle hits the little bell on the desk but the ringing only echoes in the room.

“Maybe they’re on their lunch break?” he wonders.

Kate shrugs, going toward the back of the room to a door marked ‘Employees Only.’ When she raises her hand to knock, the green door swings open. “Castle? It’s unlocked.”

She pushes her hand into the leather bag and finds the gun, brushing her fingers along the grip but not drawing it. Not yet. A strangled sound comes from the first door on the left and Kate opens it with her foot.

The man lies on the ground, hands scrambling across the carpet. “Help,” he croaks, fingers grabbing at her sneaker. “Took…”

“Call an ambulance,” Kate says as she kneels next to the man. She finds two leaking wounds: one in his right chest and another in his stomach. Castle hands her the green shirt he was wearing over his tee and Kate presses it to the stomach wound.

“He took the…”

She leans closer, unable to hear the man’s harsh whisper. “What?”

“Man took jewels,” he rasps. “Tall. Dark hair.” He coughs. “Scar on forehead.”

“Ambulance is on the way,” Castle tells her.

Kate shifts, trying to put more pressure on the gunshot wounds. “Okay. Okay, sir. Help is on the way.”

But the man doesn’t last long. After five minutes, Kate feels his body go lax, the blood stop pooling under her knees on the carpet. She sits back on her heels, swiping the back of one hand over her forehead at the strands of hair that escaped from behind her ears.

“We need to get out of here before the ambulance pulls up,” she says, rocking backwards enough to get onto her feet.

Castle stops her at the door. “Can’t. They’ll see us on the security cameras and cause trouble later on. We’ll just tell the cops that we’re tourists wandering the area. Found him when no one answered the front desk bell. Simple.”

She wants to clean her hands, get rid of the blood already starting to crust over. Instead, she sighs, pushing past Castle into the main room. Leaning against one of the walls, Kate lets her hands start shaking. Partially in her role as a terrified tourist but also from the rush of fear that darts through her. The man lying on the ground in the back room could be the dead end for this case. A dead end for her mom.

“Kate.”

She turns her head to the side, finds Castle at her shoulder.

“We’ll figure this out,” he says softly. “We’re not giving up.”

She tries to believe. She tries as they’re questioned by the cops that arrive on-scene three minutes after the ambulance. She tries as she washes the blood of the stranger off her hands, scrubbing her skin hard enough to turn it red. She tries as they take a cab back to the hotel, her sore hands in her lap and Castle silent at her side.

“I have a friend who owes me a favor,” Castle finally says when she unlocks the door to the hotel room. “I’ll call him. He can hack into the security system, grab us the footage from the cameras before we got to the cultural center. Maybe we can find our man.”

Kate sits in the chair in the corner after toeing off her shoes. The same one he sat in the night before, feet propped on the bed. Cocky and self-assured. But unlike him, she pulls her feet up so her heels rest on the edge of the cushions and puts her chin on her knees; feeling as small and tired as she looks.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ve got someone who can run the faces through a database and get us a name and last known location.”

“Good,” he replies with a wide smile. “See? Teamwork. We’re great at this.”

He leaves, swinging the flip lock out to keep the door unlocked as he goes to make his phone call. The lack of security makes her skin itch and Kate digs into her bag for the gun, slipping it down between her thigh and the side of the chair.

It feels like it did before. Back when the detective knocked on the apartment door and told her and her father that Johanna was dead. When she lost focus for school and dropped out for the semester, wrapping herself up in the blanket of case notes and reports that she begged from the lead detective. She pulled herself together, using NYU and her field studies as rungs on the ladder to get her out of the dark hole she had tossed herself into.

But this time, Kate feels like she’s trying to stop herself from falling down again without anything to grab onto.

Until Castle comes back into the room, flicking the locks on the doors, and grinning. She doesn’t know the man, not really, but he seems genuinely interested in helping her solve this case. Not for personal gain but because he wants to.

“He said to give him an hour or so,” Castle says as he plugs his phone into her charger still resting on the bedside table.

She nods. Maybe trusting him just a little will keep her from sliding back into the darkness. “Let me get in contact with my guy. Might as well give him a head’s up that I need this done.”

Kate texts Washington from the chair rather than calling him at his office, flexing her toes so that the tiny bones crack loudly in the quiet room. He responds in minutes asking her to e-mail him the information once she receives it.

“So,” Castle starts, flopping onto the bed so that his face is close to the chair. “We’ve got time to kill. Lunch from room service?”

“Sure,” she says, leaning forward to pull the menu towards her. She can feel his eyes on her as she scans the menu for lunch.

She orders first, handing the menu and phone over to Castle to put in his lunch request and give the room number. The air conditioning rumbles quietly in the corner, battling against the humidity pouring in through the open balcony door. Kate takes a deep breath of the heavy air, her chest pushing at her thighs as her lungs expand.

“I’ll be right back,” he says after a moment.

The door clicks shut without her looking up.

 

* * *

 

He returns after twenty minutes, using his hip to hold the door open in order to maneuver the tray of food in.

“Lunch,” Castle says, placing the tray on the desk. “And I got us something to pass the time.”

Plastic pieces rattle against one another when he shakes the familiar box.

“I mean, I call Miss Scarlet but you can be Mrs. Peacock,” he teases, dumping the player pieces and the murder weapons in a pile on the comforter, sorting through them.

Kate smiles, tucking her hair back behind her ear. “Where’d you get this?” she murmurs, picking up the playing board and moving it out to the little table on the balcony.

Castle grabs the game pieces, dropping them onto the board before returning for the plates of food. She already has glasses of water in her hands, arranging everything on the table and claiming one of the chairs in the sunlight.

“I warn you, I’m giving no mercy.”

She places the murder weapons as he sets up the colored pawn pieces in their starting locations. “What are we playing for?” she asks, taking a bite of her sandwich.

“Pride,” he says quickly. His eyes dart down to the point of her v-neck. “Or clothing.”

Kate smirks, rolling the dice to determine who goes first. “I think I’ve got a bag of gummy bears in my purse.”


	10. Chapter 10

He owes her two bags of Skittles by the time she e-mails off the security footage to Washington. She sits back into the mesh backing of the chair, putting the closed laptop on the table.

“It’ll take him a bit to run it through the facial recognition database,” she says, palming the Miss Scarlet piece before he can snag it. “Up for a fourth round?”

Castle shakes his head. “I’ll admit defeat for now. But Beckett? With those skills, you could easily be a detective. I’d feel totally safe in a city you protected.”

“Good to know if my current job doesn’t work out that I’ve got a fall-back,” Kate says as she folds up the playing board. “Hand over the wrench, Indy.”

He slides the little metal piece at her. “What now?”

Kate shrugs, piling the board and the laptop up. “I’m going to watch TV. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

“Except not really.” She glances over her shoulder as she packs the game away in the box left on the bed. “No room key to get back in here. I’m a prisoner in this hotel room.”

“Drama queen,” she mutters, stuffing one of the pillows under her chest as she flops onto the bed. She presses the power button of the remote and flicking to the correct channel. The title card for Temptation Lane splashes over the screen and she hears Castle groan from the door to the balcony. “What?”

“Temptation Lane? Seriously?”

Kate narrows her eyes in his direction as he sits near her hip. “Yeah. Shut up or get out.”

The mattress dips as he rolls onto his stomach next to her. “You know,” he says, resting his chin on his fist. “My mom was on this show.”

She hums, already halfway pulled into the episode she has seen at least four times before.

“She was kidnapped a few times.”

He seems to understand that her attention resides elsewhere because he quiets, becoming a silent body with his shoulder and hip pressed to hers. And then she forgets she has a companion in the room at all, losing herself in the familiar storylines.

Halfway through the second episode, Kate’s phone vibrates across the bureau. She slides off the bed to check the new message. “Washington has our man,” she says, opening her laptop and pulling up the e-mail. Castle crowds at her side, his head resting on her shoulder like this is what they’ve always done when viewing new evidence. Like they’ve done this a million times before instead of just once.

The file pops up when Kate touches the keypad. A thin man, his strength hidden under a lithe body in the photo with a face that borders on long; stubble covers his jaw and bright blue eyes stare at her from the computer screen.

“Hal Lockwood,” Castle reads from behind her. “Doubt that’s his real name.”

She clicks out of the report with the scarce amount of information for a man of Lockwood’s caliber and back into Washington’s e-mail. Her boss came through, finding a signal from the man’s cell phone. “He’s on the island.” Kate plugs the coordinates into a map, zooming in on the address. “Looks like a warehouse.”

“We need to check this out,” he says, getting to his feet and scraping a hand through his hair. “Now. Before he can move the jewels out of the state.” He grabs the pair of socks he had discarded before their game of Clue and pulls them on, lacing up his boots.

Kate closes her eyes for a moment and tries to make herself believe that this is just another case. Another random file that Washington tossed at her with minimal instruction, the names unfamiliar and the bounty unconnected to her personal life. She copies down the address of the warehouse and closes the laptop with a snap. Knowing that the island will be chilly in the evening air, she changes into jeans as Castle calls a cab to meet them outside the hotel.

She doesn’t bring the leather bag, slipping her phone and identification into her back pocket. Buried underneath a couple of sweaters that didn’t make it out of her suitcase during her rush to pack is her ankle holster. Kate velcros it to her right ankle, securing the handgun under the hem of the denim and making sure she can still get to it without fumbling.

“Please tell me you have a thigh holster in there too,” Castle pleads when he sees her practicing the draw. “That’d be so hot.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Kate tosses back with a smile. “Left that one at home.”

In the lobby, she has another key made for the room, giving the copy over to Castle as they wait for the cab. Her look says everything: I trust you. Don’t screw this up. He only nods and puts the blue and green plastic card into a leather wallet that looks as though it has seen better days.

Parts of the city have brightened up, coming alive under the cover of darkness. Nightclubs flash neon lights that spill into the cab as they drive by. Sports bars border on noise disturbances with the cheers of baseball fans. More than a few scarcely dressed women walk the backstreets looking for work. Castle stays silent at her side when she asks the driver to let them out two blocks before the warehouse.

The area isn’t the best. There aren’t any working street lights and, as soon as the cab’s taillights disappear around the corner, the night settles in around them.

“So,” he says, starting in the direction of the warehouse. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know.”

Three of her least favorite words. It was all I don’t know after her mother was found murdered in the alleyway. I don’t know from the cops at her doorstep, apologies on their lips and nothing in their eyes. I don’t know from her father when she asked why he drank until he passed out on the kitchen floor.

But right now, she has no clue what the plan is. They don’t know if Lockwood knows about the security footage of him outside the cultural center or if he has his own security set up around the warehouse, already alerting him to their presence.

“Play it by ear,” she says finally.

A single light over the entrance to the warehouse makes the dead-end road look yellow and sickly as she and Castle stop at the corner. She steps forward carefully, using the mirror of a car to get a count on possible henchmen.

“Three guards,” she whispers, her voice harsh in the shadow of a parked SUV. “Armed. I don’t think we can take them out without one alerting whoever’s inside.” She rests her back against the navy crossover. “I’m open to dumb ideas here.”

“Good. Cause I’ve got one.” His hand brushes her side as he checks for his gun. “We’re drunk ─”

“─ It’s barely seven o’clock ─”

“─ and we’re looking for our car,” he continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “Just follow my lead.”

He loops his left arm around her waist and Kate leans into his side, letting him carry more of her weight than necessary. She stumbles over her own feet, nearly tripping him up as they start down the dead-end alley. Her giggle catches the attention of the guards, three heads turning in their direction.

“They’re not buying it,” he mumbles into her hair when she allows her head to roll onto his chest, her giddy smile wide so her warm breath moistens his pectoral through his t-shirt. She glances toward the men and sees two of them reaching toward their waists for their weapons, the other moving slowly toward a short flight of stairs to the warehouse.

Kate keeps the faux smile in place as she rocks into Castle’s hip. “Shit,” she mutters. “Okay.”

She pushes away from him, letting herself half-run to a random car as if checking if it is theirs, the side of her hands pressed to the dirty window as she peers in. Castle snags her elbow, tugging her away from the sedan and back into his side.

“I’ve got the one on the right,” she says quietly, turning into his body in order to free up her right hand.

“No time,” he replies. “Just…”

The arm around her waist tightens, pulling her in front of him and, for a moment, she panics, her body a sudden shield between the men and Castle. His hand on her lower back keeps her against him when she jerks back once. The other hand slides into her hair, his thumb a hard line over her ear and his fingers curling into the dark brown strands.

She has half a second to figure out what he’s doing, to read the plan in his eyes.

His mouth touches hers, gentle and soft. Her lips part in surprise, her eyes going wide before slamming shut as he cups the back of her neck and makes the whole thing a little less tender. He bites at her lower lip, running his tongue over the mark to soothe it. Kate whimpers into his mouth, unable to stop the sound as her hands come up to grasp his shoulders.

Castle pulls back, fingers stroking along her throat and shoulder. His eyes dart between her face and the men over her shoulder and she wishes that she could see the guards herself.

“Eleven and two,” he says into her lips.

She barely hears him before she shoves herself up on her toes and kisses him again, her mouth open so that she swallows his sharp gasp. Her right hand slides down his back, finding the grip of his gun and flipping the safety off.

“Ready?” she asks, breathless and voice thin against his cheek. Except she can’t get her eyes to open as his hand continues down over her ass, keeping her hips close to his.

He presses his lips to hers again, a silent reminder to focus. Then he drops his hands to her waist, keeping her steady as she spins. Her aim goes wide to the right on the first shot before she corrects herself and takes down the first man. The second has his gun raised by the time she lands the shot in the man’s chest.

“Nice,” Castle breathes. But he keeps moving, taking the gun from her hand and jogging toward the warehouse.

Kate draws her own weapon before following him. When she touches her tongue to her lips, she can taste him. The fading heat still there even in the chill of the night.

“Beckett?” he hisses. “Coming?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” she says, jogging to catch up.

The third man has disappeared into the warehouse. Kate shoves the memory of Castle’s mouth on hers down and pulls herself together as he leans a shoulder against the doorframe to the building.

“Count of three. I go high,” he says without turning to face her.

She flexes her fingers around the grip of the gun. “One,” she starts, not giving herself a chance to think about what might be on the other side.

Castle finishes the countdown, using his free hand to open the door. He swings in, letting her crouch down under his arm to cover the lower portion of the warehouse. A desk lamp on a table and a thin strip of light shining in from outside as a door across the building closes provide the only illumination in the otherwise dark space. Pallets of boxes could be hiding more men but she doesn’t bother stopping to check.

His longer legs carry him to the opposite wall faster, shouldering open the door to another alleyway. Kate gets there in time to see a black sedan screech around the corner. She can’t make out the license plate as it speeds out of sight.

“Damn it,” she mutters, walking back into the warehouse.

It’s a dead end. Lockwood ran off with her latest lead on the Charlotte jewels.

She wants to shoot something.

“Hey,” Castle says, coasting a hand up her arm to squeeze gently at her shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

Kate doesn’t respond, pulling away from his touch to pace the length of the warehouse. Adrenaline and frustrated energy vibrates through her body and walking around the building that holds no answers anymore isn’t going to help. Swallowing down the disappointment, she secures her gun in the ankle holster and starts back toward the doorway they came through. She hears his shoes echoing in the room as he follows.

She’s thankful he doesn’t say anything.


	11. Chapter 11

He lets her walk off some of her energy before he calls the cab company to pick them up. They stand in a pool of light from a street lamp seven blocks from the warehouse. Exactly where she stopped her near-jog and collapsed against the metal pole.

Her lack of movement lasts four minutes before she starts walking again. Restless circles around the light post with her hands in her pockets.

“Kate,” he mutters, reaching out to snag the waistband of her jeans and pulling her close. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Her fingers slide against his shirt, scraping at his sides. She hums low in her throat and pushes away from him.

She can’t stay still, not sure what will happen if she lets herself stop moving.

The cab ride takes forever, tortuous and long and silent. She has her arms crossed, back pressed into the corner of the seat and the door, her leg bouncing. He sits a little too close, his thigh touching her hip and his hand a gentle weight on her knee, his pinky stroking at the soft cloth at the crease. After ten minutes, she settles, the tension still singing through her body but the need to be in motion isn’t overwhelming.

He gets out from the cab first, paying without looking at the bills he hands through the divider. When the driver tries to give him change, he waves it off, helping Kate out with a hand at her elbow.

The lobby air conditioning blasts on high to combat the humidity hanging heavily in the nighttime air. She shivers, staying close to him with her hands rucking up his shirt to touch his warm skin. Instead of pulling her hand away, Castle’s fingers wrap around her wrist and smooth his thumb over the back of her hand. He keeps her tucked into his side and half-trips over his feet as they get into the elevator.

As soon as the door closes, he spins her up against the wall. His mouth touches hers, gentle compared to the fierceness from the alley. 

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he murmurs.

She smiles, eyes narrowed as she tickles his side lightly. “Hence the distraction for the guards?”

Castle shrugs as the elevator announces their arrival on the correct floor. “Seemed like a good plan at the time. Kiss you or get shot.”

“Not really thought out,” she throws back at him as she steps off the elevator ahead of him. “What if I had shot you instead?”

“Oh, I don’t think that was going to happen,” he says, confidence oozing from his voice. “I can read you like an open book, Beckett. If I wasn’t going to kiss you, you were going to do it sooner or later.”

She ignores him, digging in her back pocket for the room key but Castle already has the copy of the key in his hand, his body pressing her against the door. “I’ve got it,” he says, his lips right at her ear when he slides the plastic card into the door and waits for the light to turn green.

They spill into the room. She pushes at the light jacket he wears until it gets caught on his hands. Cursing, she turns to kick the door closed but he’s faster. Shaking free of the jacket, Castle hooks his hands under her thighs and uses her back to shut the door, her head hitting the wood with a quiet thump.

“More distractions?” she gasps as his lips coast down her throat.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Beckett,” he says. He shoves his hands up under her shirt, using his hips to keep her in place on the door as he drops the dark green tee on the ground at his feet.

She dips her head, finding his jaw and biting at it as he fumbles with the clasp of her bra. Kate fights to get at the hem of his shirt but just as she wraps her fingers around the soft cotton, he gives up on the clasp and pulls the cup of the bra down and drags the nail of his thumb over her nipple.

Her forehead falls to his on a sharp gasp, her legs tightening around his waist and body arching forward into the touch. “Shit,” she groans, ducking just a little further to kiss him, rolling her hips against him. “Bed, Castle.”

When he doesn’t move, Kate drops to the ground and nudges him backwards across the room, tossing her bra onto the bureau. Her fingers work at the buckle of his belt, pulling the leather from his jeans and dropping it onto the floor. He unbuttons her pants, using his thumbs to push the denim down. It tangles around her feet, caught on her sneakers until he walks her back to the bed, pressing on her shoulder until she sits.

Castle tugs off her shoes and the ankle holster and getting rid of the jeans completely. His mouth presses over her stomach, his fingers dancing up her calves and thighs until he reaches her underwear. “Drop back,” he says.

“No,” she counters, keeping herself upright with an arm extended behind her. “Off with the clothes.”

He has trouble with the zipper of his jeans but she doesn’t move to help, doesn’t try to hide her smile when he glares at her, fighting to unlace his boots. “Shut up,” he growls as soon as he gets down to his boxer shorts.

“Yeah? Make me,” Kate teases, scooting back on the bed, body rolling to the side when he plants a knee at her hip.

He drops his chest onto hers, his teeth biting roughly at her jaw and neck. Solid and heavy and warm, pressing her into the mattress. The kiss lasts long enough to have her gasping for breath when he pulls back.

“We shouldn’t do this,” she manages, reaching up to twine her fingers through his hair, thumb smoothing over the faintest of silver scars that disappears into the dark brown strands.

Castle hums into her shoulder, hands busy trying to rid her of her panties. “No, we shouldn’t.”

“Because I hate you,” she groans as his cheek of stubble brushes the side of her breast.

His laughter makes her bow up and he takes the opportunity to strip off the cotton underwear. “I hate you too, Beckett,” he says, mirth shimmering through the rasp of arousal in his voice. “My worst nemesis.”

Her short nails scrape over his head, tightening sharply when his teeth close over her nipple. She arches up, a whimper caught in the back of her throat, and he presses a hand to her stomach, keeping her against the bed. His free hand slides down along her side, tickling at the crease of her hip right above her thigh. Just two fingers. Two fingers slip between her hips and his waist and over her clit.

“Oh, fuck,” she whines, hands curling around his ears and pulling him up.

He nips at her collar on his way up her neck to her lips. But his fingers don’t stop. They curl up into her and this time, he catches her groan with his mouth and not just his ears. “You’re so wet,” he whispers, a gentle companion to the slow glide of his fingers.

“I need…” she starts, a moan hiccuping against his cheek. “I need more.”

It gets her his thumb rubbing tight circles over her, enough to make her hips buck up into his.

Kate pushes at his boxers, getting them down to his knees. “Castle, now.”

He gets up and she can’t hold back the whimper of the loss of his fingers. But dances around on one foot, getting the dark plaid shorts off and searching for his jeans. She can’t stop the burst of laughter that escapes as she watches him, head propped up on the pillows.

Castle crawls back onto the bed, the condom wrapper between two of his fingers until she snags it away. He begins to protest before she rips it open and reaches down. He’s hot and heavy in her palm as she strokes him, feeling his groan vibrate through his body to hers.

“Shit. You need to stop,” he says, grabbing her wrist to halt her movements. Kate twists her arms, unrolling the condom onto him and lightly scraping her fingertips along the sensitive skin for good measure.

He lets his erection glide through her arousal, teasing her to the point of begging. Her nails scrape lines along his shoulders and down his back, digging into his ass until he finally, finally, enters her.

It’s a slow, tight slide and her breath catches hard in her throat. He grunts as their hips meet completely, lifting his chest up to lace their hands together, pressing them into the pillows. Kate can feel the stickiness of her arousal on his warm and thick fingers and it makes her curse into his shoulder.

“Fuck. Please,” she whimpers.

He lets himself go, his hips driving hard into hers and making her back bow up, her hands squeezing at his until her nails pinch into his knuckles. She hitches her right leg up over his thigh, opening herself up further and making his long, steady thrusts turn to sharp little twists that have his pubic bone grinding against her clit.

Her orgasm tears through her, a wildfire licking up her spine, her lips burning along his neck with a stuttering string of his name tied up in fuck and oh god and keep going.

And he does.

She’s still shuddering when he comes. He lets go of her hands, scooping up under her shoulders and rolling them over. Kate doesn’t stay boneless against his chest for long. She pushes up, her feet wobbling for a moment on the floor before she gets her balance back.

Dragging a hand through tangled hair, she leans a hand down next to his head and brushes a sloppy kiss over his mouth. “Wow,” she murmurs, feeling his hand smooth along her shoulder.

Her body still buzzing, Kate moves into the bathroom, turning the shower on. The water heats up as Castle follows her in with two washcloths. He lets his fingers trail through the water sliding over her body, gently pushing her back into the tiles.

He hands her one of the white washcloths and the bar of soap with a soft smile. She gives him the little container of hotel shampoo. Their shoulders bump as they trade spots.

The last hour makes her forget the disappointment of the night, taking the towel from him and drying herself off. He makes a face when she rubs one of the spare towels over his head, causing his hair to stand on end. Kate wraps her towel around her torso, tucking the top corner in so she can brush her teeth. Castle retaliates, his hips pressing into her ass and his arms circling her waist, teeth and lips at the curve of her neck.

And it makes her smile. His fingers tickling at her stomach under the flap of the towel and his nose brushing against her ear. She spins, catching his lips in a kiss that surprises even her. He loops one arm around her, keeping her against him as he backs into the room, grinning into the kiss when she stumbles into him.

The smile drops off her face when she sees the piles of photos and reports and files all tossed onto the bureau from before. Her mother slumped in the alley and the map with the jewels’ last known locations and the medical examiner’s reports.

She lost focus and had sex with her competition and fucked everything up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, tugging at the ends of her towel.

Kate swallows, shaking her head. “Nothing,” she says. “Just… Nothing.”

She finds a clean pair of underwear and a t-shirt, climbs into bed, and flips the TV on for the evening news. And unlike the night before, she doesn’t protest when he flops onto the other side in his boxers, his mouth warm on her cheek.

She needs to shake him. Go back to hating him and not feeling the quiet curling of happiness in her stomach.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, she’ll pretend none of this ever happened.

If the way he keeps unconsciously touching her is any indication, it’ll be impossible.


	12. Chapter 12

She wakes up feeling too hot, too crowded in the bed. Sometime during the night, Castle tugged her from the edge of the mattress up against him, an arm tossed over her waist and steady, warm breath tickling at the back of her neck.

For a moment, she forgets the plan she made last night and relaxes into his body. Her heels slide down along his shins and he grunts, pushing his knee between hers, arm tightening on a sigh that ruffles her hair.

She wants to stay here. To ignore the fact that she should be trying to beat this man, not sleep with him. To fall back asleep and let him wake her up later when the sun is actually coming through the blinds. To pretend, just for a day, that she has a normal life.

But she can’t and she doesn’t.

Kate pulls herself away from him, pushing his unhappy groan to the back of her mind as she gathers up clothes for the day. In the bathroom, she brushes her hair, cleans her teeth, and puts on her armour against Castle’s charms.

And she needs them. When she returns to the darkness of the main room, her phone casts a veil of thin light onto the still-sleeping man. During the short time she spent in the bathroom, he rolled onto his back, arms flopped out at his sides with the sheet pushed down and tangled in his feet. She can see now that his boxer shorts aren’t plaid; instead, little treasure chests are embroidered onto the dark blue fabric making her wonder how such a ridiculous man can be so successful at his job.

The same man who played Clue and watched Temptation Lane with her also managed to get to a lost collection of Egyptian gold before her and didn’t stop gloating for weeks. The guy who offered to help with her mother’s case is the same one who set up a cat-and-mouse game for some scrolls he had already long since collected and given to his employer.

The one who systemically took her apart with his mouth and fingers and body last night when, years ago, he teased her for being the new girl on the treasure hunting scene, insisting that she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

He knew what he was talking about back then.

Kate shakes her head, trying to get rid of the memories as if they were droplets of water clinging to her hair, and starts to search for the things she needs for the day. She cringes when she finds her jeans, inside out and tangled with his. Their clothes are a trail from the door to the bed just like the patches of reddened skin from her throat to her stomach. A reminder of how she screwed up.

Her gun goes into the ankle holster, the velcro too loud in the pre-dawn. The phone battery flashes a low warning but she puts it in her pocket. She carefully places all of the files from the bureau into her bag, her fingers hesitating over the journal Castle had claimed as his own.

She leaves it. Leaves him snoring softly, tiptoing out of her own hotel room like she’s sixteen again and sneaking out of her parent’s apartment to party with Maddie and her friends.

Only one person sits behind the check-in desk in the lobby as she sits at one of the complimentary computers to search for an internet cafe. A few blocks down, open in twenty minutes. Kate makes sure to erase the history of her search just in case before stepping out onto the sidewalk. She walks, using the time to come up with the skeleton of a plan.

She has no idea where Lockwood ran off to. As soon as she gets to the internet cafe, she can e-mail Washington and see if he can track Lockwood’s phone or trace his route on traffic cameras. Find Lockwood and figure out what information he has. Get the jewels and get the hell out of Hawaii.

 

* * *

 

She waits outside until the cafe owner unlocks the front door. Kate gives the woman a smile but doesn’t make conversation as she heads for one of the computers in the corner. A quick swipe of her credit card - she hates to leave a trail but the signs everywhere in the building say that they don’t take cash - gets her onto the Internet.

It’s not secure but she navigates to her e-mail and sends off a message to Washington. She gets lucky and finds an old iPhone charger someone left behind and takes the opportunity to plug her dying phone in. Even though it’s only six in the morning in Hilo, it’s nearly noon in New York and Washington is quick to respond.

I’ll do my best.

Just four words and a lot of white space in the e-mail.

Washington could take anywhere from an hour to half the day to get back to her. She can’t go back to the hotel. She’s tempted to find another hotel, get a room, and sleep for a couple of hours but her boss would kill her for depleting resources for another hotel.

Kate opens a few more tabs, looks at the news from home and browses book reviews. Anything to kill time until her phone vibrates across the laminated countertop of the internet cafe. She finds a pair of boots online, considers purchasing them, and even goes so far as to put them into her shopping basket before she closes the tab. Not the time for personal things.

Which would be fine except for the fact that she gave in to personal needs and slept with Castle last night.

As if the man can sense her failing, Washington texts her an address and the fact that he has only a seventy-nine percent certain that this is where Lockwood is hiding now. She’ll take it.

Kate wipes the history, unplugs her phone, and goes to find the owner to sign the receipt.

She hates not having a car, finding a cab company on her phone and calling one to pick her up. The driver is a tattooed girl who doesn’t look old enough to drive, her hair dyed bright pink. Soft rock plays in the taxi as Kate gives the girl the address Washington gave her. She considers having the driver just stay outside the one-story house in case she needs to get to another location. But she just pays and gets out, waiting for the yellow cab to turn the corner before she faces the house.

A car sits in the driveway, a navy sedan with dark-tinted windows. All of the blinds are pulled down in the windows of the house. It appears to be just another family home in a quiet neighborhood.

Kate draws her weapon, pushing the heavy bag so that it rests against her back rather than along her side, and jogs across the lawn. A front door, the garage, and a back porch are the only real exits from the house. She worries at her lower lip as she formulates a plan.

She wants back-up. Three possible exits are too many for her to cover herself and still feel secure that no one is escaping out the back. So she dials up a number from her contacts.


	13. Chapter 13

The man answers the phone with a gruff “Yo.”

“Hey, it’s Beckett.”

“You’re up early,” he says.

She shrugs, wandering down the sidewalk away from the house. “So are you. Ryan there too?” Esposito grunts and she takes it as an affirmative. “You two willing to give me a hand with something?”

“Gonna cost you,” she hears in the background from Ryan, “us going out of our way to help.”

“Fine.” Kate steps to the side, letting a lady with two dogs on leashes pass by. “Address is coming to you in a text.”

 

* * *

 

They meet up around the corner half an hour later. Esposito gets out from the front seat of the cherry red Charger, pocketing the keys as Ryan shuts the passenger door.

“You breaking into a house, Beckett?” Ryan asks, reaching out to shake her hand when they step up onto the sidewalk.

“Actually,” she says, shaking Esposito’s hand even as they start walking back, “yeah. Exactly that.”

She likes them. Neither pushes for more information about her case as she fills them in on the exits of the house. They all check their weapons once she assigns them doorways to cover. Esposito doesn’t look pleased when she tells him that she has no idea how many people are inside or if she has the blueprints for the house. Nothing for it now.

After their agreed upon two minutes waiting time, she turns the knob of the front door.

She can hear Esposito entering through the back porch, Ryan slipping under the garage door before she gets fully into the house.

The front door opens into the living room. A rifle sits on the coffee table, the copy of People Magazine underneath it open to a page about Sonja Gilbert’s murder back in New York City. She catches a glimpse of a man’s boot running into another room, calls out to warn Esposito.

Kate hears the scuffle in the other room, jogging around the corner into a kitchen.

Esposito has Lockwood kneeling on the stained tile, a gun pressed to the man’s temple. Ryan skirts behind her to join his partner.

“Other rooms are clear,” she says without pulling her focus from the back of Lockwood’s head.

She longs for zipties to bind the man’s arms, to drag him somewhere so she can really talk to him. To find out exactly where he stands in this whole mess of a case. To make him pay for being any part of her mother’s murder.

Instead, she shoves her gun down into the ankle holster and repositions one of the kitchen chairs in front of Lockwood.

“Mr. Lockwood.”

The man doesn’t blink, doesn’t move his gaze from just right of where she sits. He’s good.

She’s better.

“You know about the jewels from the Charlotte Hotel theft,” she says calmly. She can trust Ryan and Esposito to keep quiet about her case and when she lets her eyes flick up to their faces and finds nothing but passive interest. “You had them in that warehouse last night. You have them here now.”

Lockwood only narrows his eyes at her accusation. “You think I’m that dumb?” he taunts.

Kate shrugs. “Well, you were idiotic enough to hang out on the island after escaping from me at the warehouse. You didn’t destroy the security footage from the cultural center. You left your phone on so I could track your location. So, yeah, Hal. I think you’re definitely that dumb.”

He clenches his fists on his thighs, a low growl rumbling through his chest. “And you don’t think I did it on purpose? Please. I’m a low rung on this ladder.”

She leans forward, forearms resting on her knees and her hair spilling over her shoulders in a tangled mess. “Who do you work for?” she asks.

Lockwood blinks, his mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Listen, Lockwood,” she says, voice deadly cool. “I’m gonna find out who you work for. You can tell me now and maybe I’ll let you go or we can try this another way.”

Nothing. Nothing but a unsmiling mouth and flat eyes, his hands relaxed against his legs.

He won’t talk. Not with her just sitting across from him, asking him the same questions on a repeated loop. Special Forces are trained to withstand interrogations far more intense than what she has in her arsenal.

Time to turn it up.

Kate kicks her chair backwards, the wood clattering loudly against the cabinets under the marble countertop. “You think I’m fucking around?” she hisses, circling both Lockwood and Esposito whose gun still rests against the man’s head. “You think this is a joke?”

“Beckett…” murmurs Ryan from over her shoulder.

“Your boss paid someone to kill my mother. You don’t think I’ll do the same to you right now?” She bends, sliding her gun from the holster. She hears both Ryan and Esposito trying to talk to her down as she levels the weapon at Lockwood’s head. “Give me the name.”

“Hey,” Esposito says, a hand reaching out as if to calm her down.

“No,” she tosses back. “He gives me the name of his employer or I shoot.”

“No, you won’t.”

Castle’s voice from the doorway startles her. The quiet, gentle way he speaks cuts through her anger and frustration even faster than Esposito’s harsh whisper.

She doesn’t turn to look at him, concentrated solely on the assassin in front of her. “Stay out of this, Castle. It doesn’t concern you.”

“But it does.” His fingers brush along her shoulder before trailing over the bare skin at her neck. “We’re a team, Kate.”

“Not in this,” she says as she tightens her grip on her gun and ignores his touch. “He’s mine.”

Kate has no chance to stop him when he grabs her wrist. She tries to elbow him in the stomach but Castle sidesteps, twisting her arm up along her back and plucking her gun from her hand. When she swings her left arm, searching for his waist, he yanks her arm up higher so she’s stuck balancing on her toes.

The fight drains out of her with a whimper.

“Rick, please,” she begs, collapsing back against his chest. “He killed my mom.”

“I know, I know,” he repeats into her ear, pulling her away from Lockwood.

The man still kneeling on the floor chuckles, his head shaking and giving her glimpses of his grin. “Aw. Your girl having a meltdown? Fuck, Beckett. It was a job. Nothing perso─”

Castle punches Lockwood and Kate can hear the sharp crack of bone. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls. He turns to Ryan and Esposito. “You have him?”

Esposito nods.

Castle pulls on Kate’s shoulder, angling her back into the living room and shoving her onto the worn grey couch.

“Kate,” he says, hooking a finger under her chin as he crouches in front of her.

“He knows the name.” She hates how small her voice sounds. Hates that he looks at her with sympathy in his eyes and touches her cheek too softly. “Castle, I need it.”

“Not this way. We can go back in there but I’m taking lead.” He holds up a single finger when she begins to protest. “Either I lead or we go back to the hotel. Two options.”

She wants to push him away, go back into the kitchen, and completely ignore Castle’s ultimatum.

Instead, she takes a deep breath and sighs, “Fine. We do it your way.”


	14. Chapter 14

Lockwood kneels still when she rounds the corner back into the kitchen. Esposito hasn’t moved but Ryan leans against the counter, arms crossed and eyes on Lockwood. She knows they had to have heard some of the conversation; the walls are thin and everything carries too well in the single-level house.

“Everything good, Beckett?” he asks, eyeing Castle warily.

“Yeah. Espo, Ryan,” she says, stepping around Lockwood even as Castle pauses in the doorway. “This is Castle. He’s my…”

“Partner,” he jumps in. “At least temporarily.”

“Just temporarily,” Kate mutters while she joins Ryan against the counter. She waves a hand at Lockwood, raising a brow as if to tell Castle that the assassin rests in his hands.

And then she watches.

Castle dominates the room as he systemically takes apart Lockwood’s defenses. It’s masterful and a little frightening how quickly he latches onto the lies being spilled onto the tile floor by the hired hitman and turns them against Lockwood. Even Lockwood looks surprised when Castle gets him to reveal the location of a second safe house on the island, one that a man named Cole Maddox could be holed up in once he took possession of the jewels not ten minutes prior to Beckett arriving.

“But you have no idea what you’re up against,” Lockwood says, desperation and exhaustion coloring his tone as Castle paces over to Beckett’s side. “This is all bigger than you could imagine.”

“You have him?” she asks Esposito and Ryan, ignoring the man’s warning and pushing away from the counter.

Ryan shrugs. “Gonna owe us even bigger to get rid of this guy, Beckett.”

“Tell you what. You two ever make it up to New York and I’ll put you up somewhere nice. Room service and everything,” she offers. “We can go see Annie.”

Esposito laughs. “Sure. Orphans singing is just what we want on our days off.”

“Then how about a burlesque club I know in the Meatpacking District?”

“Better,” the two other men agree.

Kate grins. “Thanks again for this. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Geez,” groans Esposito, shoving her toward the door. “It’s not like we’re a team or anything. Go.”

Castle follows her out the front door of the house, tugging her phone from her hand as she starts to dial up a cab. “I rented a car,” he says in explanation, angling them around the block and past the red Charger. “It was faster than waiting on a taxi to get me here."

He parked the gold sedan under a tree, half-hidden in the shadows. He unlocks it with the keyfob, waiting for her to get into the passenger seat. But she stops with her fingers on the handle.

“Kate?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Just…” She raps her knuckles on the glass of the window. “Thank you.”

Castle slides into the front seat with a shrug. “Your mother deserves justice. You deserve whatever type of closure comes from finding the man who did it.”

“But you made sure I did it the right way,” she says.

“You gonna owe me?”

“Sure. You can join the boys in New York for a weekend.”

He grins, sly and teasing just out of the corner of her eye. “Not the kind of owing I mean,” he replies.

Kate snorts out a laugh as she sits back into the seat.

“Actually,” he continues, glancing over at her as he navigates onto one of the main roads. “I think we need to talk about that. About last night.”

She doesn’t want to. Not now when she’s stuck in the car with him as they go to face down Maddox. She wants to focus on their task and definitely not remember how he felt pressing her down into the mattress. Kate twists her thumb into the hem of her shirt, wetting her lips as she tries to organize her thoughts.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” he says, scattering her almost-crafted outline to the wind. “At least, not for me.” He pauses as they merge onto the Hawaii Belt Road. “I like you, Kate.”

“You like me,” she repeats back dumbly, attempting to work the knowledge into her mind. Trying to pull it all together into something that actually makes sense. “No. You hate me.”

“But I don’t. Isn’t that weird?”

Kate doesn’t have a response. Not now when she can feel his eyes on her. Not now when she’s trapped in the car not ten feet from him.

“I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen,” he says as they switch onto Route 130.

“Listen,” she says after a minute. “I can’t say that I’m proud of what happened. I let my guard down and slept with the enemy but I can’t do this right now. Not before we’re supposed to go take down Maddox.”

“I’m the enemy?” he asks, the bite of anger finally leaking into his voice.

Kate rubs her fingers against her eyes, a headache already forming behind her temple. “Not… the best choice of words, I’ll admit. But Jesus, Castle. We’re rivals. We’re not supposed to sleep together or have a relationship or─”

“Have a life?” He clenches the wheel as he passes a slower car on the left. “Last I checked, we don’t take an oath of chastity when we sign up for these things. Putting the job ahead of your heart is a mistake. Do you really want to look back on your life and wonder ‘if only’?”

She pulls her legs up onto the seat, her arms looped around her shins. This is too much.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

They spend the next thirty minutes in a heavy and suffocating silence.

 

* * *

 

The house sits on the corner of an intersection, a beautiful two-storied building with a balcony that wraps all the way around the second floor. Bright purple flowers in colorful pots decorate the balcony and front yard. Kate gets a glimpse of a backyard, a child’s jungle gym set up with a bike toppled over along the very edge of the grass before it slopes down to the beach.

Castle keeps driving, taking a right onto the private drive, backing the car into a little pull-off to shelter it with the huge, leafy trees. A safety precaution in case anyone stands watch for cars that show a little too much attention to their house.

“I say that we─”

Kate doesn’t wait for him to finish making the plan before she opens the door and jumps out. The anger and fear and the need to just have this whole mess done with makes her stupid with adrenaline. She hears him calling her name even as she skids on the loose-packed gravel until she gets her balance and starts sprinting back toward the safe house.

She only stops to draw her gun from the ankle holster, rounding the fence with Castle at her heels. She ignores him and goes for the front door.

“Beckett! Stop!”

Instead, she steps into the house, weapon up and ready.

It still doesn’t prepare her for the spray of gunfire that appears as she enters the first room. She dives for cover behind an armchair. The stuffing doesn’t provide a lot of safety and she knows that she only has a short amount of time to move. Kate takes a deep breath.

A bullet zips past her arm as she runs for the neighboring room. The kitchen has no island in the middle, no dining room table to flip for a barricade. Shit.

Cole Maddox appears in the doorway, tall with short, dark hair and an automatic weapon aimed at her. She turns, firing a series of rounds at him even as he darts for the back door and into the yard. Castle shouts for her to stop, to wait for him.

She can’t let Maddox escape.

Kate doesn’t think when she charges out after the man. She sees her her mom in that alley in the floral skirt Kate had mocked her for wearing before Johanna went to work that morning. So when she nearly trips over the runner for the sliding glass door and comes face-to-face with Maddox holding his gun up, she stumbles to a stop.

“Wait,” she says, holding her hands up, her fingers away from the trigger. “I just need the name. Who hired─”

The shot steals her words, the bullet burning through her chest. Her gun clatters to the ground, her knees buckling so that she slides down the plastic siding of the house. She hears Castle, his voice fuzzed as if traveling through thick water, but she can’t focus on him. Can’t focus on the ringing echoes of gunshots or how Maddox crumples to the grass.

Can’t really feel him as he pulls her down onto the ground, his hands pressing firmly into her chest or his wrist when she wraps her fingers around the joint, needing something to anchor her as her vision goes blurry black.

The last thing she does hear is her name, a whispered and desperate thing on his lips.


	15. Chapter 15

She hears him whispering her name a moment before the burn of pain pulls her completely from unconsciousness. His fingers, tracing over her cheeks, are soft and gentle but she can feel the wet trails they leave as he drags them through tears. Her tears as the drugs wear off and every ache comes to the surface.

It hurts to breathe.

She forces her lungs to inhale deeper, lets it out with a shuddering whimper.

Even in the low light in the room, she can make out his figure at her side. She manages a small, weak smile in his direction and he answers with a grin, shifting his body closer as if he has been waiting for her to do anything but sleep.

“Hey, Castle,” she rasps, letting her eyes close again.

“I, uh,” he says, and she feels his hands shift away for a moment, “bought you some flowers.” A bright spray of wildflowers, purples and yellows and whites with a splash of pink and blue, appears in his lap. “There’s a cop down at the end of the hall and she’s got a whole room of them so I figured we might want to start up a competition or something.”

She can’t laugh. She wants to but the sound gets tangled up in her chest, caught behind the fire that still burns there just next to her heart.

“We’ll fail.”

“With that attitude, yeah,” he groans, setting the pale orange vase back on the rolling cart near the window. He comes back, fingers careful of the IV line taped to the back of her hand when he starts swirling figureless patterns along her forearm. “How do you feel?”

Kate manages to raise her brow.

“Stupid question. Sorry.”

For a while, only the beep beep beep of the monitors and the low voices of other patients and nurses can be heard in their corner of the long hospital corridor. The stroking of his fingers against her skin lulls her back into almost-sleep, her eyelids heavy and her breathing steading out despite the ache when she inhales too deeply.

“Happened with Maddox?”

He jerks into alertness, his hand tightening briefly at her elbow. “Huh?”

“Maddox,” she murmurs. “Assassin we were looking for. Shot me. Him.”

“In custody with the police. But,” he says, standing to dig into his pocket, “I have these.”

Castle pulls the tray closer, the metal banging against the side of the hospital bed as he drags it from near her feet up to her waist. She reaches up to straighten the tray but her arm drops to the soft blankets a second after she raises it with a strangled curse. He doesn’t respond to her failed attempt beyond a breath caught in his throat and a flicker of his eyes toward her face; she can’t summon up the energy to thank him for not calling attention to her weakness.

He struggles momentarily with the drawstrings on the pale grey bag before he turns it over. Even in the yellow light of the room, the jewels sparkle when they spill onto the tray over her lap.

“Oh,” Kate sighs, wishing she could touch the hard edges of the diamonds and the settings of the bracelet and necklace set. “Are they all…”

“Here?” She nods. “Yes. Every piece from the Charlotte Hotel theft.”

Every piece that lead to her mother’s murder. She’s so close to finishing this thing she can taste the sweetness of success on her lips.

“And the man who hired Maddox?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

She growls even though the vibrations through her chest and throat ache.

Castle sits back into the plastic chair, the seat creaking with the movement. “A senator from New York. William Bracken.”

“Why?”

He shrugs, touching the back of her hand again as she stares at the jewels. “No idea. But Kate?” When she shifts her gaze over to him, her lids feeling heavy already, he looks as serious as she has ever seen him. “We’re a good team. We found Lockwood and Maddox. We got the name of the guy behind all of this. We’ll find the answer to this, too.”

“Not much of a partner right now,” she says. “Was stupid back there.”

“You think?” he returns, his voice sounding amused and deeply concerned at the same time when he leans his cheek on his free hand. “Don’t do anything like that again, okay?”

Kate smirks. “Too much for you to handle, old man?”

“Liked it better when you called me Indy, Beckett.”

She hums softly. “You are definitely as ruggedly handsome as Dr. Jones, you know? Bet you have a woman in every country you can call up when you’re in the area.”

“Contrary to popular belief,” Castle says, tickling at her palm briefly, “I’m not quite the womanizer that the grapevine makes me out to be. I’ve been married once but she couldn’t handle the secrets of the job or the hours away from the city and her. Sure, there have been women on longer cases but you’re telling me that you haven’t enjoyed a couple of one night stands while on-duty?”

It gets harder to concentrate on his words but she tries to focus on his voice. She wants to be alert if he wants to spill on his past relationships. “Of course,” she mutters. “But I heard about you and your boss. About you and Serena Kaye,” Kate says, raising a brow.

“Serena and I never slept together. We worked together.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Working together?” She hopes he can see the air quotes; even the thought of lifting her hands makes a steady ache set up deep in her bones.

“No. No,” Castle reassures her. “This might have started with me attempting to use the case to get into your bed but now? I think I might be falling in love with you.”

The next dose of painkillers swamps her bloodstream so she isn’t sure she hears him correctly. Her voice is slurred. “Love me?”

“Maybe.”

It sounds a lot like ‘yes.’


	16. Chapter 16

“I can’t.”

“You can. Two more steps, Kate, and you get a break.”

She forces her feet down those last couple of stairs before she feels her muscles tremble, her knees threatening to drop her. She manages his name in warning so that he can control her fall to the physical training staircase. The shallow, gasping breaths that come with her tears feel like fire to her lungs but she can’t stop. Her fingers curl into his jeans, her head tilting into his stomach.

“What’s your number?” he asks, right hand sliding down her arm to take her pulse. “No lying this time.”

“Fuck. Eight,” she moans from behind clenched teeth. “I can’t move.”

“So maybe more like a nine.” He brushes his fingers through her hair and she can’t bring her body to shift to prevent the motion. Her hands fall from the loose fabric at his knees to rest at her own ankles. “Pulse is fast, too. You’re pushing too hard.”

Kate growls, the noise coming out strangled by her tears. “I want to go home,” she whispers.

“Can’t carry you so you’re going to have to walk. Think you can or should I commandeer a wheelchair?”

Neither option makes her feel better. Either she hobbles down the hall past the nurses station and the waiting room, Castle hovering like a helicopter the entire time as she refuses his help or she gets wheeled around like a damn invalid.

But she can’t even think about taking another step without falling down and collapsing in the hall would be far more humiliating than her other choices.

“Wheelchair.”

“You gonna stay upright while I find one for you?” he asks. No malice or teasing in his voice and she could kiss him with the surge of thanks at the absence of mocking if she wasn’t so tired. His hand, heavy on the back of her neck, keeps her against him until she nods into the curve of his waist.

Kate sways for a moment when he steps away, her hand flying to his thigh to steady herself even though the movement pulls at her chest. “I’m okay. Go,” she says.

She focuses on her own feet, trying to keep from toppling over. She’s been shot before, been through rehab stints just as grueling and painful as this round. It hasn’t hurt this much in the past. But she also hasn’t had someone who cares about her enough to stick around through her whining.

His hand appears in her line of vision, nudging against her wrist. “Your coach, my lady,” he says with a grin, strained as it is.

She can’t use him to lift herself up to her feet, though, because it tugs at still-healing muscle. The floor spins as she forces her abdominals to work through the effort of standing and she feels his hands at her elbows, lowering her to the seat of the wheelchair.

“You still with me?” he asks, turning the chair toward the exit of the physical therapy room.

She hums, the vibrations echoing in her chest as she watches the automatic door swing open to the hallway. A nurse dodges them with a quick smile as they start toward the elevator.

“Because I have a proposal.”

Kate isn’t sure if the stutter of her heart comes from the fact it stopped for a few minutes less than a month ago or the words he just spoke. “A what?”

He leans over her to press the button for the elevator, the doors sliding open immediately as if the car had been waiting for them. “A proposal. Been thinking about it for a while now and since you’re cleared to head home in a couple of days, I thought we should talk about it.”

She plays with the fabric of her loose pants, waiting on him. But he only manages two words before the elevator gets to their floor and he has to maneuver her around a crowd of people waiting at the doors.

Somehow, Castle bribed his way into getting her a private room once she had recovered enough to get off the general floor. Instead of harsh white walls and constant noise from machines and other patients and the staff, she has soft blue paint and quiet and a view of the ocean in the tiny corner room. The chess board he borrowed from the nurse’s station still sits on the tray, left halfway through their game from last night.

He flips the brakes down on the chair so it stays steady as she transfers back into the bed. She jerks through the movements and he helps her silently, flipping the thin sheets up over her legs. She waits for the faux leather of the armchair to squeak but it doesn’t come. When she opens her eyes, she finds Castle standing at her side.

“You have a ring for this proposal?”

The grin slips from his face, his mouth falling open. “What? No. I mean, it’s not that kind of proposal. Do you─ Wait, what?”

She grins, tired and amused. “Messing with you.”

“Mean.” He takes a deep breath, gathering himself. “I think we should keep working together. We make a good team, a strong team. I’ve already talked to Washington.”

“You what?” she asks, trying to push herself up and only ending up grunting as she slides back down the bed. “How?”

“You left your phone unlocked last week while the doctor checked you out. I took it and called him,” he says with a shrug. “Anyway, he said that it’s mostly up to you. There’d be some talk over whose organization would be in charge, how percentages would be cut, but we could figure that out. Kate, I think this could work. I want this to work.”

Kate doesn’t do partners. Not permanent ones, at least. She’ll work with people for the duration of a case and then be done with them. But looking at Castle right now, she knows he wants this partnership to last beyond the Charlotte theft.

“I don’t…” she starts.

“No need to answer right now,” he cuts in. “Just think about it.”

He pulls the metal tray closer so she can reach it without leaning forward. He doesn’t look at her for a few minutes, his eyes on the pieces of the board, his finger tracing the edge of the cardboard. A heavy sigh makes the edges of her blanket flutter a moment before he finally turns his gaze up to her.

“Your move.”


	17. Chapter 17

She falls asleep on his shoulder during their third flight in twenty-four hours. A deep sleep that she doesn’t come out of until the wheels touch down at JFK and Castle nudges her awake.

“Home?” she asks, still heavy with the exhaustion that had dragged her under while they were still waiting on the runway back in LA. Not even the rocky takeoff pulled her awake. It still aches to push herself upright, her torso tight and sore from being slouched over for six hours.

“Almost.” His lips press against her forehead, dry and warm against her skin. “Need anything? I stashed some of your painkillers in the carry-on and I think I’ve befriended Jacinda so─”

“Jacinda?”

He looks a little bashful but it disappears quickly. “Blonde flight attendant up there. Anyway, if you need some water or anything, I bet I could get her to grab it for us before we reach the gate.”

Kate shakes her head, trying to stretch in the confined area. “I’m fine,” she says, reaching back to redo the mess of her ponytail. “Just want my own bed.”

Castle gathers their bags from the overhead compartment, waiting on her to slide out of the seats ahead of him. She knows he wants to be able to catch her if she falls - he’s been doing the same thing since she was able to walk further than a couple of feet without having to take a break - but it doesn’t annoy her as much now. His body at her back comforts her.

She calls a car service while he grabs the suitcases from the moving belt and the white sedan meets them along the curb. He loads the bags into the trunk, getting into the back seat with her. But she doesn’t give the address of her building, asking the driver to go to an intersection on the Upper East Side instead.

“Thought you wanted to go home,” he whispers.

“Need to drop the package off first. Washington needs it as soon as possible.”

She fights to stay awake during the half hour drive through Queens as his thumb smooths over the back of her hand. Distracting and wonderful.

Which is exactly why she shouldn’t agree to his proposition.

Which is exactly why she should agree to his proposition.

It would be so much easier if he only pissed her off and got under her feet like an untrained puppy. But he helps. He comes at things from a different angle and makes her think outside of the box she had forced herself into. He makes her smile and laugh and lighten up.

“Kate? This the place?”

She leans into the window, checks the street signs, and nods. “Yeah. Thanks,” she says to the driver as she pays for the trip.

“We going to the Met?” Castle asks, popping the handles of the suitcases up so he can follow her toward Fifth.

Kate glances back at the car, waiting for it to disappear around the corner before she speaks. “Not exactly. Washington and I have a drop point around here for bigger trips.”

She turns onto a path just past the 79th St Transverse, the cool night air dropping a few degrees further under the shade of the trees. On their right, the windows of the Met reflect the light of streetlamps and blinking bike safety lights. Under one of the archways, a man sits with his guitar, the music echoing a little as they pass through. They end up skirting the edge of the softball fields and Castle grins when he looks over the pond.

“Another castle,” he says in explanation, nodding toward Belvedere Castle.

“Had to hide there once,” Kate says, a little out of breath from the walk but still pushing forward. “Bunch of thugs cornered me on one of the turrets in the middle of winter.”

“Oh, please tell me you stabbed one of them with an icicle so they’d never be able to connect you to a weapon.”

She only smiles and hears his groan of disappointment from her side.

After going around the Delacorte Theatre and the fences on either side of the walkway turn from metal railings to geometric wood, Kate hesitates.

“Tired? Because we can stop and sit for a while,” Castle jumps in immediately.

She is; the exhaustion from walking this far makes her want to sleep for hours but Kate shakes her head. “Just trying to remember which spot it is now.”

Even in the slowly growing darkness, she navigates the winding paths of the Shakespeare Garden with ease. The lamps provide enough illumination for her to read the bronze plaques that label some of the plants. She and Washington cycle through the plays with each drop and it takes her a moment to figure out which of Shakespeare’s works is next up in the rotation.

She finds the right sign. Just three lines and the identification of the act and scene of the play.

“What’s special about rosemary and pansies?” Castle asks as she pushes aside some of the branches even though leaning over the fence sends pain burning hotly through her chest.

Kate just wiggles the fingers of her free hand back at him.

He pushes the suitcases up against the bench, shifting the things on his arm until he can tilt her bag toward her. She digs around for a moment, cleverly adjusting the hidden panel out of Castle’s view so she can pull the pouch of jewels out.

“Maybe it’s Hamlet that is special,” he muses. “Have an affinity for Denmark?”

“Never been,” Kate says, shielding her motions from his vision.

Washington stashed their dropbox at the base of the rosemary bush, hidden in the shadows of the branches and leaves growing thick in the spring. Kate works to undo the complicated system of locks, exhaustion leaching her usual dexterity.

He appears over her shoulder, his stubble-roughened cheek scratched against hers. “Need help?”

“No,” she bites out. “Let me focus.”

“Fine.”

Kate hears him reading the plaques of some other plants down the sidewalk until she finally feels the top of the box unlock. She hesitates, the weight of the jewels heavy in her palm.

There are still so many things left unanswered. She has no idea why Bracken wants to cover up the existence of the jewels, why he hired someone to murder four people. It kills her to leave the rest of this in the hands of Washington and his connections.

“Hey.” His voice washes over her, soft this time. When she turns her head, she finds him a few feet away; keeping his distance like she asked. “You okay?”

Kate drops the bag into the dark wood box. “Yeah. Just don’t like having this out of my control,” she says, snapping the top closed. “Let’s go home.”

She walks through the gently curved paths slowly, her right arm curled over her stomach and her shoulders hunched up to her ears. It only takes him four minutes to slide up next to her, shortening his stride and tugging at her elbow until he can press his palm to hers. Her body loosens by the time they reach West 81st. He gets them a cab from the line waiting for people visiting the Museum of Natural History and gives her address to the driver. Castle insists on paying once they fight the traffic on the way downtown.

“I’ve thought about what you asked,” she says as they stand in the elevator of her building. “Back in Hawaii.”

He stays silent and she senses that he’s waiting on her to push through this.

“I don’t work well with partners.” She can feel him deflate next to her when they step off onto her floor, his body slowing down in the hall. “I never have. But… Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten used to having you around.”

Castle takes her keys, unlocks the front door.

She pauses at the threshold. He has been in her space before, sharing that hotel room and sleeping by her hospital bed every night. But this is her home. The safe place she returns to after each case to unwind and relax and be herself. Kate isn’t sure she is ready for Castle to be in that place with her.

“So, this is the lair,” he says, edging past her into the kitchen.

Kate is suddenly thankful that she put everything away before running out the door. Her coffee mug back in its place on the metal hook over the coffee maker. No dirty dishes in her sink. Trash taken out.

She follows him, watching as he takes it in. He touches everything, tracing his fingers over the textured metal of her kitchen island, the exposed brick of the living room, and the edge of the canvas print hanging next to her couch, suitcases abandoned near the front closet.

He turns, looking a little out of place. “Not much of a lair,” he jokes, hands tucked into his pockets.

“Well,” she says, sitting carefully on the couch, “it’s my apartment, not a lair.”

Castle sits, settling back into the couch so he doesn’t jostle her too much. “It’s nice. Warm and eclectic and nothing like I imagined your place would be.”

She lets her head tip back onto the cushions and her eyes close, allowing the fatigue to wash over her. “You thought I lived in a sterile environment?”

“Not exactly. Maybe at first but since I’ve gotten to know you, this makes more sense. The hints at your travels and all of the books. It suits you.” He brushes his hand over her thigh and when she opens her eyes, finds him looking timid. “Do I?”

“Do you what?”

“Suit you?”

The question hangs between them, making the air thick. She fights to swallow past it, sitting up straighter even as she picks at the fringe of one of her throw pillows.

“I think we should try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Note from Logan: I owe the deepest gratitude to Jenny for looking over this story more times than I care to count and for fixing a story I desperately wanted to write but couldn't seem to make sense of. I honestly cannot thank her enough.


End file.
